HISTORY OF SURIGAO
Emergence from the Sea
A scene of forbidding desolation engulfed the province on its birth millenniums ago. The land masses newly-emerged from the ocean floor were barren. Violent windstorm lashed at its rugged coast and a heavily overcast sky incessantly drenched the mist-shrouded earth with torrential rains. Upon its craggy surface only the crudest form of life creped.
Most of the province then was under the sea. The towering ranges of Diwata and other peaks were perhaps the only points above the surface. The present coastline with its great swamps and the plains along the valleys and at the foothills were nowhere to be seen. Gradually, as a result of the movement of the earth’s crust, lands shifted. While others appeared, some disappeared into the depths of the Pacific Ocean. It is through this slow process of upheaval that Surigao evolved and acquired its configuration today with its chain of off-shore islands.
It is known whether the province ever bred its own ancient native. But the possibility of the existence of the first Surigaonon in the dim past is not remote. Discoveries in Palawan of crude stone axes made of tektites which showered the Philippines during the Paleolithic period quite unmistakably indicate that man lived in the country and possibly Surigao in those times.
Land Bridges
During the Ice Age some 300,000 to 200,000 years, B.C., a large part of the northern hemisphere was enveloped by a massive cover of ice. The waters surrounding near Asia and the Philippines were sucked towards the frozen continent. This tremendous ebbing of the tide shrunk the sea level to as much as 150 to 500 feet exposing huge land masses that were once submerged. These became the historic land bridges which linked the Philippines with the mainland of Asia.
These ‘bridges’ also connected Surigao to the Visayas and Luzon. Staring in the vicinity of Punta Bila, it crossed the channel of Surigao towards Hikdop Island, Dinagat and Loreto and then Southern Leyte. From there it spanned Leyte and Samar, running via San Bernardino and to the Bicol Peninsula.
From the present shoreline, the land bridges extended miles outward into the open sea. Thus, Siargao, Dinagat and the rest of the islands were connected with the mainland. The channel of Surigao through which vessels cruise today going south and back was almost dry land during that glacial period.
Quest for a Better Life
It was through this ‘highway of history’ that the movement from the Asiatic mainland of pre-historic men and animals travelled. The ancestors of present-day Surigaonons tramped the wild and trackless land with pygmy elephants, stegedon, rhinoceros and other animals now extinct as their fellow-travellers. They were all questing for a better life or simply driven by their savage, wandering instincts.
Whether the old men of Asia, the Peking man and Java man, came to the province is a matter of historical conjecture. Anthropologist have not done any digging in the province nor has there been a discovery of any of their remain in the province nor has there been a discovery of any of their remains in part of Mindanao. But again the possibility that both of them once roamed in Surigao cannot entirely be ruled out. The so-called waves of migration came from China in the north and Java in the south. The Negroid, the oldest racial stock known in the country, to which the aboriginal Mamanwas belong, traces its roots all the way to Southern China and fossilized remains of antediluvian animals found in nearby Agusan as old as the Java man could be the still unraveled clue to his presence in Surigao and Mindanao.
Land of the Brave
Shortly after sailing into the now famous passage of Surigao Strait, the fleet of Magellan anchored at Surigao before steering towards Leyte and Cebu where Magellan launched his ill-fated punitive expedition against Lapulapu and was subsequently killed in the battle of Mactan. Pigafetta called Surigao then as Calagan, (derived from the words: kalag (soul) and Gan (land of the Brave) meaning land of brave people). In the course of time, this would however, refer not only to Surigao but to the entire territory along the Pacific seaboard of Mindanao stretching along the coast up to Davao Oriental.
Subsequent European navigators, who carried sailpower exploration to new frontiers would give the province other names. It was known among Spanish, Portuguese, English and Dutch mariners as Cadigar, Cangaia, Caragna and Caraga, later names bearing a striking resemblance to the original one given by Pigafetta and apparently all derived from it.
Bernardo dela Torre, a member of the Villalobos expedition, upon sighting the coastline of the province, gave it another name. He christened the land Ceasare Carole in honor of King Charles V of Spain. This would eventually also broaden in scope to include the whole of Mindanao.
One of the early charts of the Philippines in the 17th century carried the province in still another name, this time as Suriaco. Carlos Quirino believes that this is an error in spelling on the part of the cartographer. Surigao, as it is today, was already familiar to foreign seamen. Its outermost islands in the Pacific, Siargao and Dinagat, were along the sea corridor traversed by galleons of that era and invariably it was to these islands that the early sea dogs for land and fall.
Recent studies, however, tend to show that Surigao may not be an error after all. Quite a number of maps during that period were drawn by peripatetic missionaries. The word may have originated from Sorico, a Spanish term which means ”belonging to psoriasis: a squamos skin disease of remarkable chronicity.” To this day, the Mamanwas are afflicted with a peculiar skin disorder known locally as “karo”. The Spaniards may have used this odious word in putting the province on the map.
The Legend of Solibao
In this book of travel, Giovanni Careri, an Italian adventurer, described the province as Cape Soliago. He wrote about its hostile and fearsome people, some of whom were reputed to be cannibals. As it now appears in all maps, Surigao was first mentioned during the arrival of Legaspi by a native guide who was aboard one of the Spanish vessels while the flotilla was passing the gulf of Southern Leyte on its way to Bohol. Canotuan, son of the chieftain of Cabalian, pointed out Surigao which was visible, as one of the flourishing towns of northern Mindanao.
It is certain that the province is named after the town of Surigao which is not its capital city and premier seaport. There is a little doubt that it became known as such after the coming at Magellan. A number of Spanish root words such as Surgir (to anchor) have cropped up as the likely source of Surigao which obviously has corrupted after long usage among its various inhabitant. But a definite historical account on the matter has so far eluded research.
There is, however, a wealth of folklores on the subject in the oral history of the province. At least three versions on the naming of Surigao have become rooted in the tradition of the people.
One popular legend says that Surigao is named after Rajah Solibao. As the story goes, Solibao, a Mamanwa chieftain, sought sanctuary, like Magellan, in the sheltered waters of the place when he was caught in the open sea by a storm while fishing. Solibao and his companions landed near the mouth of a river where the city is located today. They decided to settle in the land when they found out that it was fertile and there was gold in the riverbanks washed down from the nearby hills. When the Spaniards came, it was already a thriving barangay and they were told that Solibao was its king. But now knowing the native tongue they mistook this as the name of the village and called it Surigao.
A folklore handed down from the early Boholano immigrant who opened many of the coastal and inland settlements in the province holds that Surigao is actually derived from two words: Sur (South) and Agao (a common sobriquet in Visayan). It is said that in those days, itinerant merchants coming from the south would regale curious listeners with tales of their adventurers in a place which they simply described as “Sa Sur, Agao.” As the springboard for going deeper into the south or in the return journey before crossing the strait between Mindanao and the Visayas, the province became known as Surigao, although geographically it lies in the northern part of Mindanao.
As third version has a more colorful and credible claim. It contends that the province is named after Rajah Siagu as is the island of Siargao. The Rajah is one of two kings who met Magellan upon his arrival. He is recorded vividly in the chronicle of Pigafetta as the ruler of three islands and live in Calagan.
When Magellan paused at Surigao before proceeding to the Visayas he may have gone there not only to avoid the path of an oncoming typhoon but to return the goodwill of the Rajah. Dinagat, Bucas Granded and Siargao was not identified by Pigafetta, but they are the most prominent island triangle the vicinity of Calagan where Magellan sailed into the country. They are undoubtedly the three islands of Siagu. According to lgend, Dinagat is named after Queen Dina, the mother of Siagu, who ruled a kingdom near the sea (dagat). This particular folklore acceptable and sound moorings. Siagu is unquestionably a historical figure. He was a leader of the province and, then as now, places are named after men like him. Surigao after all mean: the land of Siagu.
GATEWAY OF DISCOVERY
The off-shore waters in the northeast through which sailing ships must approach the coast from the open sea is a dangerous route. It is the dreaded path of some of the most powerful typhoons in the country and a swirling low-pressure area. And yet, few bodies of water anywhere in the world are famous as this sea corridor. It is through this gateway that the intrepid Europeans captains blazed the trail of discovery and conquest in the Philippines in the early 16th century. It is also here that the deepest spot on earth, the Philippine Deep, is located. And farther north, knifing inward west between Surigao and Leyte, is the Strait of Surigao, scene of one of the greatest naval battles in history. Through this sometimes turbulent passage, the flagship of Magellan first entered the Philippine archipelago on March 1521 after an epic journey across the Pacific Ocean.
Through accurate seamanship or sheer accident, voyages after Magellan’s treaded on the waters of the province, inevitably making anchorage here or landing on its shores. Hofre Garcia de Loaysa, bound for the Spice Island, anchored at the Bay of Lianga on October 9, 1526. One of his galleons was wrecked by a storm and sank in a shallow reef off Cape San Agustin, but he managed to reach his destination.
Another expedition was launched by a worried king of Spain under the command of Alvaro de Saavedra. It left its home port in Mexico in 1527 to look for the lost Loaysa. On February 4, 1528, the fleet arrived at Nonoc Island. Saavedra buried one of his sailors who died on board the ship there and refurbished his food supply. He stayed in the island for 19 days and explored the neighboring islands and the mainland of Surigao. Loaysa sailed for Bucas Grande where he made another brief stop-over. Then, he headed south and reached Baganga, where he picked Sebastian Oporto, a crewman dumped two years earlier by Loaysa, before proceeding to Tidore.
The first expeditionary force sent to conquer the Philippines left to port of Natividad, Mexico, with a fleet of six warships on November 1, 1542. One year later, after a rough voyage, Ruy Lopez Villalobos arrived in the province which he promptly claimed as crown possession. He steered towards Cebu, dogging the coastline expecting to cross the strait of Surigao. But strong northeasterly winds, however, drove him south to the Moluccas.
Miguel de Legaspi and Andres Urdaneta, who accompanied the unsuccessful expedition of Villalobos, finally made a solid beachhead for the “sword and the cross” in the Philippines on their arrival in 1565. The Spanish flotilla cruised through Surigao Strait and the Gulf of Leyte, skirting the province which was within sighting distance, on its way to Limasawa and Bohol. Upon reaching there, however, Legaspi immediately sent emissaries to Surigao and Butuan. Fathers Martin de Rada and Juan del la Isla subsequently concluded a treaty of peace with Linampas, the provincial overlord or regulo, thus paving the way for the colonization and Christianization of the hostile south.
Captain Edward Swan, and English buccaneer out on a hunt in the seven seas for Spanish and Portuguese prize ships, visited one of the Islands of the province in 1624. William Dampier, one of the crew-members, recorded the Place as the Island of Saint John. He described it as an isle “with a vast swampland.” This does not appear now in the maps and is shrouded with mystery. Saint John is known among cartographers as a ‘lost island’ and speculations linger to this day that it may have disappeared beneath the waves of the ocean like the continent of Atlantis. Geographers however say that this is actually the island of Siargao.
It is Francisco de Castro, a Portuguese explorer, who claims the honor, however, of having set foot in the province first and spread the virus of western influence. He drifted by accident to Surigao from the Moluccas in 1543, barely two decades after Magellan. De Castro succeeded in converting the king of Surigao and Butuan and baptized him as Antonio Galvan after the Governor of Ternate. Valeio Ledesma and Manuel Martinez, two friars on the trip, preached the gospel and baptized many people. But they eventually withdrew from Surigao when the new converts returned to their old pagan ways and became increasingly strident in their treatment of the Portuguese missionaries.
The First Glow of Faith
Agustin de la Cavada, noted Spanish historian and founder of the first newspaper in the Philippines, contended that Surigao is the first province in the Philippines to receive the glow of faith. This conclusion, perhaps, stems from the fact that De la Cavada believes that it was at Masao that Father Valderama celebrated the controversial first recorded mass in the country and performed his first baptism. Saint Francis Xavier is reputed to have evangelized in the 15th century in the heart of Moslem Mindanao, but there is no surviving record of his presence and movement there.
On the other hand, the missionaries who came with De Castro, Villalobos and Legaspi, although not really successful in their initial attempts, made significant in roads in establishing a christian foothold in the Philippines. The original batch of regular Jesuit resident friars arrived in 1596 with Buenavista as their base station. Later arrivals spread throughout the province, with Fathers Francisco Vicente, Juan Lopez and Bartolome Sanchez de Xara, a secular priest, manning the lonely outposts at Siargao and Tandag.
The Recollects tried in1597 to establish missions in Surigao, but this failed because of the hostility and resistance of the natives. Finally, the Spanish government sent an armed expedition in 1609 to subjugate the province and impose the authority of the crown. The Surigaonons, known then as Caragans, were defeated by the invading force under the command of Juan de Vega. Some 1,500 christian prisoners were liberated and in order to protect the territory from reprisal raids by the natives, the royal Fort of Tandag was constructed to garrison it.
Missionary work began to progress afterwards with the following towns as the first centers of faith: Tandag, 1662; Siargao, 1635; Bislig, 1642; Surigao, 1752; with Butuan, Linao and Talacogon in western front and hinterland. Tandag was, then, the capital of the province which was designated as the East District (Caraga) of Mindanao.
Surigao City today was an station only of the parish of Siargao and Nonoc. When the Moro raiders destroyed Caolo (caob) in 1750, Fr. Lucas de la Cruz, its prior evacuated to Surigao which he officially declared as the parish residence on February 1, 1752 when he order all the canonical books to be transferred from Siargao to Surigao.
The Fall of Tandag
The Spanish stronghold in Tandag in due time effectively blocked and neutralized the Moslem raids of the coastal towns in Visayas and Luzon including Surigao. Combined with the forest in Zamboanga and Ozamiz, this stone rampart became a strategic sentinel in the Spanish move to interdict the swift Moslem striking ships which plundered the christian settlements. Thus, in mid-July 1754, the Magindanaos led by Datu Dumango attacked it.
No help from the outside came and Tandag was doomed. The attackers ringed the fort until its defenders and the people who sought refuge in it were reduced to starvation. The siege lasted for four months but it finally fell on December 1. The entire garrison, together with its commanded, perished in the ensuing massacre. Few civilians, including a Recollect priest, were taken captive.
Father Miguel Bernad would later on write that “few events in Philippine history can equal the terrible “climax in the siege of Tandag.” Father Jose Ducos, the Captain General of the naval squadron in Iligan and Pangil Bays, would come to the rescue of Tandag too late. An air of desolation still hang about the lonely outpost when he arrived. He started to rebuild its defenses and later on repulsed subsequent Moslem attacks.
Days of Turmoil
Surigao’s history is rich in drama and is often characterized by turmoil. A few events in its past after the tragedy of Tandag, has made the province a setting of violent struggles for power, of rising nationalism and the liberation of the Philippines by the American forces.
During the Philippine revolution, Don Simon Gonzalez, the military governor of Mindanao appointed by General Emilio Aguinaldo imprisoned by friars in the province. He confiscated all their properties in the name of the revolutionary government. He sent Fr. Francisco de Paula Sanchez, a former professor of Jose Rizal who was previously a parish priest of Tagana-an and then of Tandag, into plight like a common criminal. It was a black moment for the church who has, for almost three centuries, lorded it over the fate of the province.
In 1898, however, Don Simon, his brother Wenceslao, who was designated as civil governor of Surigao, and his father Don Jantoy, a former governor, were arrested on orders of General Prudencio Garcia who came from Baganga with his own force of insurgents. The Gonzalezes, all top officials of the revolutionary government of the province, were killed somewhere in the town of Cortez while under the custody of the soldiers of Garcia. This bloody incident is a dark page in the history of Surigao. While no one have ever given an accurate account about the killing, whether it was an execution carried out on orders of superior authorities or murder, it undoubtedly was an off-shoot of the rivalry for power typical among the leadership of the revolution: a vicious, deadly struggle that in the end stigmatized its idealistic cause.
Much later, on January 8, 1924, violence would against erupt in the province. On that day, the quiet hamlets in Pamosaingan and Socorro would witness an encounter between the “Colorums” and a detachment of constabulary soldiers led by the Provincial Commander, Captain Valentin Juan. The constable were out-numbered and over powered. Captain Juan was among 18 killed in the skirmish where only two survivors managed to escape and break the news.
This soon electrified the whole country and the province was gripped with hysteria. The ‘Colorum Uprising’, as it was called would be headlined in all the major newspapers. Even the New York Times printed a story about the episode saying that Colorum assassins had gone on a rampage of killings and murders. The whole incident which should be seen from the complex perspective of emerging social and nationalistic aspirations was blown grotesquely out of proportion. Thus, the government’s response was a merciless bombardment of the Colorums sanctuary at Socorro; a scorch-the-earth policy that brought the relief from the frightened many, but vehement denunciation from the thinking few.
Lantayug and other leaders of the island uprising were captured. And on April 3, 1924 they were tried before the court. Seven days later, they were sentenced by Judge Ricardo Jalbuena to life imprisonment at the Bilibid Penitentiary. It was a speedy and at the same time mock trial.
David Sturvent, 52 years later, would write about the Colorum episode:
“An objective appraisal of the flare-up was hard to come by. If the uprising had provoked Americans and Filipinos to hard thoughts concerning the growing disequilibrium within the Philippines society, something of value might have emerged. It did not. No one, apparently asked why the uprising had occurred. The entire episode, in short, became another exercise in futility.”
But times would change. During World War II, the province became the scene of the decisive turning of the hinge of fate in the war in the Pacific. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had just liberated Leyte, after the first advance troops of the Americans made their first landing on October 17 at Campintac beach in Loreto and hoisted the ‘Star and Stripes’ there. But the Japanese had a last desperate blow from the sea aimed at foiling the U.S. invasion.
The Japanese Imperial navy dispatched a mighty fleet to converge at the waters of Surigao and Leyte to destroy the American fleet guarding MacArthur’s troops. The naval battle that ensued would be known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but the battle of Surigao Strait, which was part of the over-all naval engagement which happened simultaneously in the vicinity, would become the turning point, the decisive engagement. The Japanese fleet steaming west into Surigao Strait towards the American beach leads was destroyed by Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorfs’ Seventh Fleet in a night and day torpedo and surface bombardment action. Admiral Shoji Nishimura went down to the bottom of the strait aboard his flagship, the Yamashiro, and with him went the last hope of victory of the ‘Rising Sun’.
Writing about the Battle of Surigao Strait later, C. Vann Woodwoard would observe:
“it was not for the Japanese and American admirals converging upon the strait to introduce it into the pages of history. There are no more historical names in the area than Surigao, for it is through this narrow gateway that the Portuguese discoverer Ferdinand Magellan first sailed into the archipelago, and it was a few miles west of the strait that he met his death. Between 1521 and 1944 history had pretty much neglected Surigao.”
Perhaps, not anymore.
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NOTE: The two articles “History of Surigao” and “Gateway of Discovery” are culled from a book published by the Surigao Provincial Historical Commission.
THE COLORUM UPRISING
Surigao became a troubled spot in 1924 when a picket uprising erupted on Bucas Grande island. The disturbance, known as the “Colorum Uprising” was short-lived but bloody. Before it was brutally suppressed by the military, it focused national attention on the province as the flashpoint of what many nervous colonial and Filipino leaders feared would escalate into a popular rebellion. In the United States, the New York Times carried a front page stories of the gruesome massacre committed by rampaging fanatics on Bucas Grande Island. When the bloodshed was finally over, Surigao emerged from its nightmare as witness to a shameful travesty of human justice and the folly of punitive justice which as one American writer puts it, was accepted retribution during those times.
The beginnings of this grassroots violence were complex and dated way back. But the conflict flared up into open hostilities between the government and the so-called zealots when a contingent of Constabulary troopers attacked the sleepy fishing village of Pamosaingan on January 8, 1924. The “expeditionary force” was unexpectedly routed by a raging assembly of furious villages. Its brash commander and 17 of his riflemen, including the Chief of Police of Numancia were boloed to death during the close hand to hand the combat. Only three soldiers and the motor launch helmsman survived on the government side. Eighty local fighters, mostly fishermen and farmers were gunned down by the Constables who opened fire first and provoked village retaliation. Yet, the encounter was somehow depicted by the national newspapers and reported to Manila by provincial leaders as slaughter of defenseless lawmen ambushed by “hordes of Colorums on the warpath.” In a vengeful mood, the Manila Government unleashed a full-scale retaliatory operation against Bucas Grande.
On the afternoon of the Constabulary assault of Pamosaingan, however, the village menfolk who had been forewarned of the troopers’ arrival from Numancia had gathered with apprehension in a house near the rocky beach. They carried bolos which serve as working tool and weapon in the rural villages. But they were not preparing an ambush. They merely discussed how to cope with what they anticipated would be a repetition of Constabulary abuses and how to defend themselves against this threat. “Defensive action, not ambuscade was what were planning,” recalled Magno Juanita, 79, a survivor of the encounter.
Two months earlier, Captain Valentin Juan and his men visited Bucas Grande in a display of naked power. He destroyed the village “tangke” where peasants bathe to heal themselves of many ailments. This bathing tank was built at the behest of Felix Bernales, alias Lantayug, an itinerant faith healer, in place of a natural seaside spring at Puyangi where he used to administered water therapy to the sick, many of whom were children suffering from nosebleeds during an epidemic in the summer months. After many patients were apparently cured, the people came to regard the tangke as miraculous, one possessed with curative power.
The troopers also maltreated some of the elders of the village, kicking them with their boots, especially, those whom they suspected to be members of the secret Colorum society. The same inhuman treatment was inflicted among the folks in the other hamlets. In Pamosaingan, the constabularymen stopped a Sunday gathering of the faithfuls. They ordered all the people inside the church who were praying to go outside and then divested them of all their scapulars and religious images. These were then piled on the ground and burned before the outraged but helpless villagers.
Captain Juan regarded the villagers with deep suspicion. He was later convinced that there was a seditious plot being hatched in Bucas Grande against the government. Through the grapevine, he had learned that the Colorums planned to overthrow the government. As early as July and August of 1923, he had sent telegrams to Manila, copies of which were later given to Governor-General Leonard wood after the Captain’s death, saying that migration of land seekers from Samar and Leyte was heavy. He did not indicate the possibility of an armed outbreak, but the captain asked for the prosecution of the Colorums who said were deceiving and swindling the ignorant people, professing all kinds of supernatural powers, including that of healing the sick. He assigned agents to spy on the Colorums. This move turned out to be a fatal blunder. The Captain had failed to perceive village reaction against his high-handed actions, particularly the smashing of the water tank. Enraged by the troopers’ cruelty, some hotheads agitated for violence. Gregorio Timcang and Albino Lagapa became the most ardent exponent of village vengeance. Both who cried for blood and with indignant exhortation and threat urged the islanders to rise in arms against the authorities. Thus, a series of vendetta killings ensued, Pacifico Cariaga, a policeman from Numancia was knifed by Jose Juanite and Placido Rapol at Pamosaingan. Three other plainclothesmen were also killed at Socorro by a group led by Martin Telin and Marcelino Juanite during a drinking spree. Finally, two policemen from Dapa were also slain. News of the killings spread fast. By New Year of 1924, the whole province was in near panic. Chilling stories coming from the island portrayed the Colorums as madmen “dissecting the government agents and triumphantly dining on their victims’ raw heart.”
Captain Juan thus prepared to return to the island, an avenging warrior, determined to go to battle. He wired the Adjutant of the Constabulary in Manila on January 7 with the following messages:
“Report received today that five Constabulary detached in Socorro and Pamosaingan, Bucas Grande Island, and one policeman killed by Colorum fanatics coming from Leyte. Governor (Pedro) Coleto and myself now leaving for scene with Lieutenant Guillermo and all available soldiers numbering sixteen. Condition reported serious. Request reinforcement.”
Governor Coleto also dispatched a telegram to the Chief of the Executive Bureau in Manila informing him of the killings and the presence of “more than 1,000 Colorums in Bucas and Siargao Islands.” The Governor likewise asked for reinforcement.
Captain Juan sailed for his destination from the wharf of Surigao after a show of military might to calm down the jittery populace of the capital town. Ironically, he was on board the motor launch “Captain Clark” so named after an American provincial commander who was killed by local rebels during the uprising of 1903. The contingent passed the night at Gigaquit and from there proceeded to Numancia to pick up its Chief of Police who had jurisdiction over the barrio of Pamosaingan at the time. They arrived at the island in the afternoon.
“Pamosaingan resembled a typhoon’s eye”, David R. Sturtevant described the village before the battle.
A news dispatched to the newspaper El Debate on January 9 recounted the fight detail:
“At six yesterday afternoon, the Constabulary launch arrived in Pamosaingan, Island of Bucas, where 600 Colorums, well-armed with bolos were hiding in ambush. The expeditionary force led by the ill-starred Captain Valentin B. Juan and Lt. Juan Guillermo did not know the exact number of the fanatics.
“They observed at anchorage. Not one Colorum moved on the island. The Constabulary sent three volleys directed at the position where, according to their information, the Colorums were hiding. But nobody appeared. Soon, a Colorum appeared from a coconut grove. The Commander fired at the lone Colorum.
“Once on land, the soldiers advanced from different directions toward the house where the Colorums were supposed to have gathered. Three times, in three forward movements, they threatened the fanatics with shouts and gunshots. At the third, a Colorum sprang up, challenging and shouting in a jocular way, “Your gun are good for nothing, you are our victims. Come out my comrades!” The constabulary immediately fired, the Colorum falling mortally wounded. Five Colorums made their appearance, but they too, fell dead.
“Thereupon about 200 fanatics infuriated when they saw a number of their comrades had been killed, advanced with lightning-like rapidity upon the Constabulary, whom they attacked with bolos, regardless of the shots from their guns.
”The commander ordered “rally” but the superior number of the Colorums made the Constabulary easy victims of their ferocity and fanaticism. The commander was the first to fall exclaiming “Naku!”
The headline story of the Manila Times splashed the encounter as a massacre of Constabulary soldiers including a Captain and Lieutenant and one municipal policeman who were killed by hordes of Colorums, religious fanatics in Pamosaingan, Bucas Island, according to a telegraphic advice by the Governor-General’s Office.
“More that 1,000 Colorums are reported on the warpath.
“Reports current in official circles are to the effect that the affair is a religious uprising.”
The New York Times, America’s foremost newspaper, carried the story in its January 10, 1924 issue. Dispatched from Manila, the news was headlined: “Mindanao Fanatics Killed Troopers.” It reported that “only four constables escaped” from the scene of the clash and that a religious sect known as the Colorum had broken out after nearly twenty years of peace. It added that reinforcement was being rushed to the province and the Governor-General Wood will investigate the incident.
Coleto’s terse message to Manila:
“Rush reinforcement. Yesterday afternoon Captain Juan and Lieutenant Guillermo and eleven soldiers killed in Pamosaingan, Bucas Island by Colorum fanatics. Sergeant Gardo and three soldiers escaped. Just arrived this morning giving report, Station Surigao only eight soldiers.”
Inocencio Cortes, a former Governor and Assemblyman of the province, later telegrammed Representative Clementino Diez informing him the “more than 1,700 Colorums are reported under arms in the province and Bucas Island and force is needed to conquer them.” The wire also stated that in Pamosaingan and Socorro alone, more than 1,000 Colorums were under arms. In Cabuntog, sixty fanatics were reported under the leadership of Felix Lantayug, Alejandro Lasala (he was referring to Geraldo) and Juan Bahao. Sixty more were said to be in the sitios of Puyo, Gigaquit and Bacuag under Evaristo Estrella and Ireneo Espejon. Six hundred were under the banner of Juan Ramoso with those in Timamana under Julian Basmayor and Benito Maisog, according to Cortes.
These officials reports and numerous grossly exaggerated stories from other sources, given ample play up in the press, combined to give the national government the impression that a formidable force of fanatical fighters in the province had risen in arms. A widespread rebellion loomed in the eyes of Manila officials. Actually, only a few men were arousing the masses by force, threat and tomfoolery to rally behind their rebellious cause. Gregorio Timcang, hate-filled and emboldened by the victory at Pamosaingan rushed to the Mainit-Tubod-Timamana enclaves of the Colorums. These places were not really fanatical strongholds but areas where a number of tangke had been constructed by old man Lantayug for adherents to his brand of folk medicine. These were the simple, gullible peasants, like those on Bucas Island, who had found common hope in a man who cured them of their diseases by simply bathing them.
Fanatic fringes on the countrysides like Lantayug were not uncommon during those days. Nor was it strange for rural folks living in isolated farmlands and generally ignorant, to believe them. These were the innocent people whom Timcang and his cohorts rallied and threatened with death to march in columns of Placer and Surigao to seize the poorly-defended capital. Governor Coleto, for once, correctly sensed that the Colorums would attempt an attack in that direction.
Meantime, a striking force was rushed to the province. The gunboat U.S. Sacramento sailed from the navy yard at Cavite with 100 Constabularymen under the command of an American Col. Clarence Bowers. The coastguard cutter Polilo from Tacloban was ordered to join the gunboat. The Sacramento sailed for Bucas Grande with Bowers under order by General Rafael Crame, Constabulary Chief, to immediately attack the island and the ship commander, Frank Jack Fletcher, with instructions from the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Asiatic Fleet, ostensibly “to investigate a serious uprising of Colorums and confidentially report to him.” The yacht Apo, meanwhile, was directed to proceed to Iligan to ferry the 15th Constabulary Company. Elements of the Sulu expeditionary force also left Sulu for Camp Overton in Zamboanga at 4:30 in the afternoon of February 8 with Surigao as their destination. The highest ranking officers of the force were both Americans: Col. Waloe and major Stevens,
Bowers’ troops first landed at Pamosaingan but the whole village was deserted. Nevertheless, the constabulary men were “jumpy and didn’t like the idea of encountering the bolo men.” They found several decomposed bodies of the constables killed in the January 8 skirmish and buried them. Bowers then went to Dapa where he issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the Colorums for them to surrender. But this was ignored.
On January 23, the U.S.S. Sacramento bombarded Socorro and Bowers burned the village.
Once more, the Manila Times ran a sensational headline story on January 24 describing the attack:
“A barrage laid down by the U.S.S. gunboat Sacramento covered the landing of Col. Bowers with 100 Constabulary officers and men at Socorro, Bucas Island, where they charged against entrenched forces of Colorums ready to defend the town Wednesday morning at 8:00 o’clock.
“Casualties in Colorum ranks are unknown although two dead and two seriously wounded were found in a burned house. One Constabulary soldier was killed by a bullet.
“Believing the holding of the town inadvisable, Col. Bowers burned it and returned his forces to the Sacramento. Col. Bowers did not see fit to hold the town because of the difficulty of defense and the likelihood of this forces becoming weather-bound and unable to re-embark.”
“Col. Bowers intends to establish temporary stations at Consolacion to cut off the fanatics from Siargao. The base will remain at Dapa. From Dapa a detachment will cover northern Siargao, where several bands of Colorums are reported troublesome.
“Upon arriving the third company will establish a station at Pamosaingan, west of Bucas Grande, to prevent fanatics from crossing to the mainland.”
Commander Fletcher got underway at 4:25 A.M., 23 January 1924, and proceeded to Socorro arriving off the town shortly after 6:00 A.M. towing two motor sailing launches. The remainder of the ship’s boats were lowered and the entire landing force consisting of the 97 Constabulary and a Marine machine gun detachment, one officer and 22 mean, were embarked in thirteen and one half minutes.
“It was fully realized that Commander-in-Chief did not desire to send troops ashore unless absolutely necessary, the situation was considered such that it could hardly be avoided. The number of fanatics were variously estimated from 600 to 800 men with bolos and with about 12 rifles and five revolvers captured from Constabulary previously killed. These men were reported to have prepared ambushes and pitfalls and desperately determined to defend Socorro, the sacred headquarters of the Colorum, In view of the fact that the machine gun was by far the most effective weapon under such condition and that the Constabulary has none and no men trained in their use, it was decided that the Commander-in-Chief, were he present, would be in favor of landing a few of these important weapon with necessary men. In my opinion, the Marines saved many lives by the terror inspired in the Colorum by their machine guns and the moral effect on the constabulary.
“After embarkation of the leading force, the Sacramento bombarded the town of Socorro and environs with 4” better firing 148 rounds. Owing to the nature of the terrain not much could be told of the effect, but five or four houses were seen to collapse and one was set on fire.
“At 7:28 A.M., the Sacramento ceased fire and the landing force which had been lying off, stood on the beach firing one pounder and machine guns and landed between two reefs on a sandy beach without opposition. They then advanced into the town, passing some trenches abandoned by the Colorums. About 300 yards from the beach, fire was opened by a few rifles from an unknown number of men concealed in a natural trench or depression. At the same time loud yelling was heard and one constabulary private dropped dead shot through the heart. A number of Colorum estimated from eight to fifteen were seen to run off to the left towards the beach. They were promptly brought under heavy machine gun fire of the marines on the left flank and probably severely punished. Lt. Inman, USMC, in command of the Maine gun platoon sent word to Col. Bowers that the Colorums were running towards the beach on the left flank whereupon Col. Bowers ordered the force to retire. The Constabulary did not bring in the body of the dead private although repeatedly ordered to do so by Col. Bowers.
“As the Sacramento could no longer fire owing to the disappearance of the landing force into the coconut grove, I anchored the ship and went ashore arriving just as the force had retired to the beach. Lt. Inman, upon finding that the squad ordered by Col. Bowers to bring in the dead private had dropped him, advanced with Private H. Rohrbough and Private C.J. Rickman 200 yards ahead of our line and brought him back. At this time the morale of the Constabulary seemed to be very low, the men crouching behind trees and apparently very nervous including some of the officers. The Marines were splendid, apparently hugely enjoying the situation. Lt. Inman, and Corporal R.C. Holt, Private C.C. Mudget, Private T. Piper, Private T. Martin, Private H. Rohrbough and Private C.J. Hickman advanced about 200 yards to set fire to houses until ordered to return.
I requested Col. Bowers to move by the right flank until 50 yards clear of the line of fire. The direction of the entrenched Colorums was indicated by flags stuck in the beach. I returned to the ship and manned one gun. After a ranging shot, I fired toward the trench hitting the beach and increasing the range in fifty yards increments until six hundred yards and had been covered. Great damaged was done to houses and coconut trees. About 24 rounds were fired this bringing the total of 4” rounds expended, including 20 fired by Lt. Commander Harlow, in my absence, to 216. After lunch, a detachment of Constabulary was sent to the north of the town to a hill to find if the trench could be seen, and eventually returned, having gone some distance and discovered that coconut palms and other trees prevented a clear view of the town. Then half of the force of the Constabulary advanced slowly into the northern part of the town and saw only three natives who promptly fled. The same detachment continued south through the town where the Colorums had been entrenched and found that the fanatics had fled. One very old man was discovered unhurt and in one house were two dead and two badly wounded; all these had been struck by machine gun or rifle bullet and one of them had been wounded by a 4” shell.
“It was agreed by Col. Bowers and myself that the town would be difficult to occupy safely owing to the terrain; that a force established there would be weather bound for days; that the moral effect of the action and burning of the headquarters, which they had evidently expected to defend, would be disastrous to the morale of the Colorums and the town of Consolation would be easy to defend, had a good harbor and, if occupied, could be used as a based to blockade Socorro.
“Accordingly, the town was burnt and the landing forces embarked at 4:45 P.M. The Constabulary were sent to the LUZ which had arrived during the day and the Marines returned to the Sacramento.”
An Associated Press story carried by the New York Times on January 29 reported that one Constabulary soldier and two fanatics were killed during the battle. It also reported the burning of the town where the fanatics had been entrenched. The dispatch added:
“Governor General Wood’s yacht, the Apo, which was dispatched to the scene when reinforcement was asked has reached Surigao with a detachment of Constabulary troops and will return to Iligan for additional forces.”
Associated Press injected a curious twist in its story when it reported that “Representative Tomas Confessor has announced his intention of introducing in the Philippine legislature a resolution to ascertain whether Governor General Wood used the yacht Apo for an official tour of inspection or for a fishing trip.”
The New York Times itself on February 2, in a wireless story from Manila, reported that 800 Colorums were slain at Socorro. Quoting stories from the Captain and officers of an interisland vessel which came from Surigao, the Times that casualties of the fanatics “exceeded 800.”
Panic gripped the province, the story said, and many people were fleeing northward some as far as Manila. Among the prominent officials going to Manila were a Justice of the Peace, Dr. Litonjua and Dr. Corpus, provincial health officer, who had asked the local Constabulary months earlier for the demolition of the Socorro water tank.
From the island, Bowers went to the mainland and landed his troops in Placer. He was just on time to intercept a bolo battalion of Colorums who were marching slowly towards Surigao. Timcang who had established contact with Basmayor and Maisog in Mainit and Timamana has somehow managed to convince the Colorums there that the Constabulary had been wiped out in Pamosaingan; the capital town was thus defenseless.
The rebels held a rally at the townhall of Tubod urged the people to join them. Those who refused were branded as “Hudas” (Judas) or traitors. In order to drive terror among the uncommitted villagers and show that they intend to carry out their threat, they beheaded Juan Anob at a culvert in Timamana. As reported by the New York Times and confirmed by several survivors, the rebellious elements were recruiting by force, terrorism and falsehood, spreading the “legend that Rizal had come to life to assume the supreme dictatorship of the Philippines.” On the top of this, as in the islands, they assured the people that they would become invincible from the bullets of the Constabulary with the use of knee-cap amulets or in case they were killed they would rise from sleep after three days. Thus, those who were actually at the head column of the Colorum army which Col. Bowers met at Timamana were human shields of captives forcibly recruited to fight a lost and violent cause.
The Manila newspapers once again bannered telegraphic accounts of the bloodletting in the mainland:
“Fifty four bodies of Colorums killed at a recent battle with the Constabulary at bad-as were not buried, but were left exposed in view to show other natives the error of their belief that they would be resuscitated three days after death, the Captain of the steamer Sontus told press representatives.”
The Manila Times headline story was another screamer:
“One Hundred Bolomen Hurl Themselves on Constabulary”
“Pitched Battle, on Surigao Mainland, Second in 55 Hours.”
“Shifting suddenly from Bucas Island to the mainland of Surigao, the Colorum revolt broke out with renewed fierceness Friday when more than 100 bolomen flung themselves on a Constabulary detachment commanded by Col. Bowers and were repulsed only after 51 of their number had been killed, 19 wounded and 13 captured. This was the second fought at Bucas Island when Col. Bowers routed the entrenched colorums last Wednesday.
“The inslaught which occurred at two o’clock in the afternoon in Sitio Buyungan, Barrio Timamana, Surigao was the most formidable yet encountered by the Constabulary.
“While the battle raged, more than 200 other Colorums lurked in the vicinity and only refrained from charging because of the reserves which the First Division of the attack sustained.
“A special telegram to the director of Port yesterday confirmed the early report of the battle and said all telephone lines between Timamana and the town of Surigao had been destroyed by the fanatics in a desperate effort to isolate the Constabulary forces.
“The Colorums are successfully recruiting many adherences. In some quarters they are considered to be in reality Pulajanes.”
Actually, 64 peasants were massacred during the encounter and their bodies were left to rot for three days before they were buried in a common grave not far from the spot where they were moved down. Alejo Basmayor, one of the leaders of the rebels was the last to die among the casualties. He was shot between the eyes. Timcang, however, escaped to Agusan.
The New York Times which had given extensive coverage to the disturbance from the very beginning of the hostilities to end, had this wireless report:
Fifty-four Colorums were killed, nineteen wounded and thirteen captured in battle near Placer, Surigao, with Philippine Constabulary under the command of Col. Bowers.”
The same story reported that Senator Jose Clarin of the 11th District had attacked Governor-General Wood in a one-hour speech in the Legislature. Clarin denounced the burning of Socorro as “unnecessary, unjustified and unlawful.” President of Dapa, Nicanor Sering, had pleaded to the punitive force not to pulverize and burn Socorro, but this was brushed aside by both Bowers and Commander Fletcher. General Crame’s order to Bowers was to spare lives and destruction of properties whenever possible. And Fletcher was merely to investigate the incident and not send American troops unless necessary. But he went charging into the melee instead with machine gunners.
From the mainland, Bowers swung back to the island. Another fighting had erupted at Cabuntog. A Constabulary unit advanced against a band of 70 Colorums and sympathizers. The Constabularymen were attacked and in the ensuing skirmish two constables were wounded and five zealots were killed. But the next day, the Colorums surrendered to Major Valeriano of the 15th Philippines Constabulary Company based in Dapa.
With reinforcement from the Coast Guard cutter Polillo, Bowers this time landed in Pamosaingan. He had two hundred and fifty Constabularymen, many of whom where veterans of the Moro campaign under the Sulu-Mindanao Command. His armament included a tree-inch mountain gun brought by the Sulu-Mindanao Expeditionary force form Camp Keithley, Lanao and a trench mortar. Bowers did not encounter any opposition. Assisted by forty cargadores, the entire force, preceded by a reconnaissance party, trudged inland and reached Socorro without the enemy in sight. It turned out that the remaining village population in Socorro and Pamosaingan had sought refuge on rocky Lobo mountain, the plateau of which served as a natural fortress.
After pounding the mountain redoubt with a barrage of artillery. The Constabulary advanced against the Colorum position. A soldier’s diary had this telegraphic account of the final assault against the trapped villagers:
“Prepared at 4:00 P.M. for the field. Started at 7:00 A.M. for Cabangkalan. Sulu detachment acted as advance guard. Bombarded a hill at 9:00 A.M. with mountain gun. Col. Bowers took charged of operations. Major Steven’s advance guards followed by Delgado and Sandiko’s Jolo dets (detachments), Major Valeriano from right flank. Major Velasquez left. Major Babiera rear guard.”
The starving and shivering band of fugitives finally surrendered to the Constabulary. They began coming in. It was most impressive. They all came in little groups carrying while flags and holding up their hands. Little children as well as men.” It was exactly 8:00 A.M. of February 14, Valentine’s Day.
The following day, the last headline story on the island’s agony reported “Bucas Fanatics in Surrender.” With a triumphant note, the news disclosed that the two hundred and eighty-five Colorums surrendered to Col. Bowers.
The supposed leaders of the Colorums, Felix Vernales, Gerardo Lasala, Maximo Questerio, Juan Bahao and others were not yet captured. But at this point, Col. Bowers told Governor-General Wood that the operations against the Colorums were practically over.
Later events, as far as unrest was concerned, were anti-climatic. Lasala and others eventually surrendered. Timcang was captured in Agusan. True to the end in his role as agitator, terrorist and rebel, he was arousing the Manobos of the Agusan Valley to fight against the government. But “Lantayug”, the arch villain of the whole nightmarish episode was nowhere in Bucas Grande or the Province. He was arrested somewhere in Samar.
Summing up the entire incident, the conclusion is inescapable that the Bucas Grande affair was grist of sensational reporting. A New York Times story pointed out correctly that the fighting in the Philippines was exaggerated. Headline after headline in the country’s press could not dispel the fact that in the end more innocent lives were list in the one sided struggle between the heavily-armed military forces and the bolo-wielding peasants than the situation warranted or gave a shred of proof about the existence of an invisible revolutionary government in the forlorn island. What really stood out was the mindless and pathetic posturing of a people hoodwinked by a few rascals. The old man wandering about among the ruins inflicted by the bombardment of naval guns, whom the U.S. Marines saw, was in fact a lunatic not a fanatic.
A Manila Bulletin editorial would not brook open defiance to the forces of the forces of the government. “Opposition to constituted authority will under no circumstances be tolerated,” the editorial concluded with iron-fisted certainty. Yet, grudgingly, it conceded that the villagers “are to be pitied.” Hardly anyone saw it from this point. Power from the barrel of a gun had too much allure. Give the peasant the boot, not understanding and compassion would be the order of the day.
True to form, along with “Lantayug, Juan Bahao and other ringleaders of the Colorums, 190 alleged were charged of murder, sedition and brigandage before the Court of First Instance late in March 1924. The trial began on April 3, 1924. In seven days it was over. Judge Ricardo Jabuena, in an unbelievable demonstration of speedy justice, pronounced “Lantayug” and his co-accused guilty of multiple murder sentenced them to life imprisonment at the Bilibid prison. One hundred ninety, one shipload of the convicted were hauled to the national penitentiary and Baguio to serve their term of ten years. Others were found guilty of sedition and slapped with lesser penalty. Jalbuena even saw in the court’s decision and element of mercy when he intoned: were it not for the fact that… all of them are uneducated and ignorant, each would have sentenced to capital punishment.” What a tragedy.
But how did it start?
During the 20’s waves of migrants from Bohol, Samar and Leyte began coming to the province through the off-shore islands of Dinagat and Siargao. This was a historic migratory route and the demographic movement was not a phenomenon of those years… only it had been going on for generations. As usual, these pilgrims to a new land brought with them their own customs, traditions and folk beliefs. But most of them were Catholics. The others held diverse beliefs, some were Aglipayans, others were roving lunatic fingers posing as faith healers. Demagogues, too, came and pounced on the country bumpkins.
By 1917, the first dark cloud loomed over the islands. The tireless Aglipayan missionary Sinforoso Montemar, followed later on the mainland by Fernando Buyser, a persuasive orator and Visayan writer, started preaching in Siargao and Dinagat and before long, succeeded in converting many to the fold of the Philippine Independent Church. This sudden challenge to the established Catholic Church caused tension among the island populace eventually leading to a polarization of religious allegiance: The Catholics being the majority and legitimate Chrisitians on one end and the Aglipayans who came to be regarded as Colorums or spurious Christians on the other.
The changing impressions of the Catholic parish priest of Numancia during that time dramatized the shifting fortunes of religious rivalry in the island. At first, he considered the Colorums to be decent, neat and deeply devoted to the Sacred Heart. But by 1920 to 1921, the Dutch friar started making adverse remarks against the Colorums in public. “If all Filipinos are like you, they will never be a good future of your native land, it will not progress but retrogress,” he told the Colorums one time. The Aglipayans were said to be using indirect means, through a Catholic and Filipino association to earn the sympathy of those who despise their sect. This organization was known as the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary or simply the “Cofradia.”
The “Cofradia” was organized in Socorro by Geraldo Lasala and some migrants from Leyte. The aim of the “Cofradia” was laudably to foster devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Lasala was then a “harmless old man.”
As recalled by the survivors of the Bucas Ordeal, the organization “gave no trouble to the government. Their respect for the Catholic priest was extraordinary. They were strictly Catholic and seemed to foster the Catholic religion, too, as much as they could, bringing children to the Catholic priest and directing all those who join them to do the same.”
As in any organization, rules were formulated such as the wearing of white clothes and the wearing of traditional religious images and scapulars. Gradually, the “Cofradia” acquired a personality of its own and the womenfolk, especially the aged, were to be found spending more time in prayers and to the affairs of the organization than in the mundane of daily living.
The priest from Dapa seldom came to the island so did the parish priest of Numancia. The Cofradia in effect afforded a continuity of Catholic presence in the island. Unwittingly, and with good intention, it carried on religious functions and activities which are now encouraged and accepted as community churchism. This was grossly misunderstood by some Catholic purist and fanatics who saw it as contrary to church teachings and a pre-emption or priestly functions.
Then, in 1922 and 1923, strange characters started arriving the island. One of them was Felix Bernales and then Juan Bahao. Unknown to the islanders, Bernales or “Lantayug” was a hatchetman of Laureano Solamo, a zealot who was headquartered in Cebu. “Lantayug” had several brushes with the law and had thus become adept in deception. At the time of his arrival, he was 63 years old. He was at one time, arrested for posing with his mistress, Eusebia Puyo as the “King and Queen of the Philippines.” In the island, he posed as the reincarnation of Rizal and this time his ploy was faith healing through water therapy. This worked magic among the native villagers. Soon he had constructed a bathing tank for her daily ritual of mass healing. Cofradia members and others made early morning processions with lamplights to the tangke. “Lantayug” soon emerged as a reversed figure to the dismay and consternation of Lasala and the other elders of Cofradia. Before the uprising flared up, “Lantayug”, using the same modus operandi, managed to construct bathing tanks at Mainit, Tubod and Jabonga, Agusan del Norte and captivated many fanatical adherents. He became powerful and no one among the villagers dared expose his activities.
Another poseur who took advantage of the islanders’ ignorance was Cinon Lagbas who came from Sugbong Cogon, Misamis Oriental. His end-of-the-world tale sent many gullible people into a frenzy of abaca planting in order to produce large quantities of rope which he said would be used to leash the world to prevent it from tumbling out of its axis. The ropes were actually sold in Cebu where they command a lucrative price.
Juan Bahao on the other hand, started out convincing the villagers to join the Philippine Independence Church (Aglipayan). But early in his mission, he was expected to exposed as a pervert pouncing on innocent women of Cofradia. He was later on discredited.
The Cofradia, this time, with mixed devotion to Jesus and “Lantayug”, went on with its religious activities. Its menfolk, however, threatened by a common fee, the harsh environment of an almost barren island, formed some sort of a kibbutz. They organized work brigades with particular assignments divided according to the basic needs of the village. Thus, there was a group specializing in fishing, lumbering, harvesting, forest clearing and other chores. The Socorro kibbutz was formed with tinabangay (cooperation) as the guiding ethic. The discipline among its ranks was not a product of fanaticism but one dictated by the formidable challenge of having to survive in a new land, a weather-beaten island.
It was natural for the simple folks to be superstitious on the island where after dark one hears frightening sounds and sees many strange sights. Without the benefit of education, they turned to charms to protect them. One favorite amulet was the pulverized knee-cap of the dead which was said to render its possessor invincible. Another was a scapular with some Arabic inscriptions and this was reputed to be a protection against the enchanted spirits in the forest. These amulets later on became the phony weapons of the desperate islanders during the uprising. After the handy bolo, what else could they marshal against the guns and artillery of the Constabulary and Marines?
In the confused and jumbled culture of the islanders, it was “Lantayug” who emerged as the most dominant figure. The outside world thus tended to view the situation of Bucas Grande as one fanatical movement, not knowing that they were desperate and had no more commonality of aspirations than what could be expected among the traders in a marketplace.
The deep suspicion engendered by the religious and the inability by health authorities to provide civilized competition to the “Power” of the tangke and the marked indifference of their task inadequate information to the villagers about the absurdity of “Lantayug’s” water therapy eventually led to the unfortunate smashing of the bathing tank at Socorro. It was a senseless act that was attended by Constabulary brutality. It was the sole act which galvanized the island into a united action.
Sturvelent, not with sympathy, but perception, wrote aptly:
“The real tragedy of Surigao was that its underlying importance went unnoticed. No one in the authority sought a fundamental explanation of the upheaval. Like its precursers, elsewhere in the Philippines, it was traced to ignorance and fanaticism. Like its forerunners, also, it was regarded as an isolated event. The fact that the flare up represented and ingrained peasant response to incomprehensible change was never apparent to Manila. With all its other wordy proclivities, the Colorums represented a rude form of Hamlet nationalism. Emphasis on Jose Rizal constituted the key to understanding the countryside’s evolving climate. Two decades of American role had altered peasant aspirations. In the emerging universe of village true believers, millennium and independence had come to mean one and the same thing.”
In this scene, the Bucas Grande uprising can be considered and extension of the struggle of Adriano Concepcion in 1903. These were not lost causes actually, for as Salud Algabre said: “No uprising fails… each one is a step on the right direction.”
A scene of forbidding desolation engulfed the province on its birth millenniums ago. The land masses newly-emerged from the ocean floor were barren. Violent windstorm lashed at its rugged coast and a heavily overcast sky incessantly drenched the mist-shrouded earth with torrential rains. Upon its craggy surface only the crudest form of life creped.
Most of the province then was under the sea. The towering ranges of Diwata and other peaks were perhaps the only points above the surface. The present coastline with its great swamps and the plains along the valleys and at the foothills were nowhere to be seen. Gradually, as a result of the movement of the earth’s crust, lands shifted. While others appeared, some disappeared into the depths of the Pacific Ocean. It is through this slow process of upheaval that Surigao evolved and acquired its configuration today with its chain of off-shore islands.
It is known whether the province ever bred its own ancient native. But the possibility of the existence of the first Surigaonon in the dim past is not remote. Discoveries in Palawan of crude stone axes made of tektites which showered the Philippines during the Paleolithic period quite unmistakably indicate that man lived in the country and possibly Surigao in those times.
Land Bridges
During the Ice Age some 300,000 to 200,000 years, B.C., a large part of the northern hemisphere was enveloped by a massive cover of ice. The waters surrounding near Asia and the Philippines were sucked towards the frozen continent. This tremendous ebbing of the tide shrunk the sea level to as much as 150 to 500 feet exposing huge land masses that were once submerged. These became the historic land bridges which linked the Philippines with the mainland of Asia.
These ‘bridges’ also connected Surigao to the Visayas and Luzon. Staring in the vicinity of Punta Bila, it crossed the channel of Surigao towards Hikdop Island, Dinagat and Loreto and then Southern Leyte. From there it spanned Leyte and Samar, running via San Bernardino and to the Bicol Peninsula.
From the present shoreline, the land bridges extended miles outward into the open sea. Thus, Siargao, Dinagat and the rest of the islands were connected with the mainland. The channel of Surigao through which vessels cruise today going south and back was almost dry land during that glacial period.
Quest for a Better Life
It was through this ‘highway of history’ that the movement from the Asiatic mainland of pre-historic men and animals travelled. The ancestors of present-day Surigaonons tramped the wild and trackless land with pygmy elephants, stegedon, rhinoceros and other animals now extinct as their fellow-travellers. They were all questing for a better life or simply driven by their savage, wandering instincts.
Whether the old men of Asia, the Peking man and Java man, came to the province is a matter of historical conjecture. Anthropologist have not done any digging in the province nor has there been a discovery of any of their remain in the province nor has there been a discovery of any of their remains in part of Mindanao. But again the possibility that both of them once roamed in Surigao cannot entirely be ruled out. The so-called waves of migration came from China in the north and Java in the south. The Negroid, the oldest racial stock known in the country, to which the aboriginal Mamanwas belong, traces its roots all the way to Southern China and fossilized remains of antediluvian animals found in nearby Agusan as old as the Java man could be the still unraveled clue to his presence in Surigao and Mindanao.
Land of the Brave
Shortly after sailing into the now famous passage of Surigao Strait, the fleet of Magellan anchored at Surigao before steering towards Leyte and Cebu where Magellan launched his ill-fated punitive expedition against Lapulapu and was subsequently killed in the battle of Mactan. Pigafetta called Surigao then as Calagan, (derived from the words: kalag (soul) and Gan (land of the Brave) meaning land of brave people). In the course of time, this would however, refer not only to Surigao but to the entire territory along the Pacific seaboard of Mindanao stretching along the coast up to Davao Oriental.
Subsequent European navigators, who carried sailpower exploration to new frontiers would give the province other names. It was known among Spanish, Portuguese, English and Dutch mariners as Cadigar, Cangaia, Caragna and Caraga, later names bearing a striking resemblance to the original one given by Pigafetta and apparently all derived from it.
Bernardo dela Torre, a member of the Villalobos expedition, upon sighting the coastline of the province, gave it another name. He christened the land Ceasare Carole in honor of King Charles V of Spain. This would eventually also broaden in scope to include the whole of Mindanao.
One of the early charts of the Philippines in the 17th century carried the province in still another name, this time as Suriaco. Carlos Quirino believes that this is an error in spelling on the part of the cartographer. Surigao, as it is today, was already familiar to foreign seamen. Its outermost islands in the Pacific, Siargao and Dinagat, were along the sea corridor traversed by galleons of that era and invariably it was to these islands that the early sea dogs for land and fall.
Recent studies, however, tend to show that Surigao may not be an error after all. Quite a number of maps during that period were drawn by peripatetic missionaries. The word may have originated from Sorico, a Spanish term which means ”belonging to psoriasis: a squamos skin disease of remarkable chronicity.” To this day, the Mamanwas are afflicted with a peculiar skin disorder known locally as “karo”. The Spaniards may have used this odious word in putting the province on the map.
The Legend of Solibao
In this book of travel, Giovanni Careri, an Italian adventurer, described the province as Cape Soliago. He wrote about its hostile and fearsome people, some of whom were reputed to be cannibals. As it now appears in all maps, Surigao was first mentioned during the arrival of Legaspi by a native guide who was aboard one of the Spanish vessels while the flotilla was passing the gulf of Southern Leyte on its way to Bohol. Canotuan, son of the chieftain of Cabalian, pointed out Surigao which was visible, as one of the flourishing towns of northern Mindanao.
It is certain that the province is named after the town of Surigao which is not its capital city and premier seaport. There is a little doubt that it became known as such after the coming at Magellan. A number of Spanish root words such as Surgir (to anchor) have cropped up as the likely source of Surigao which obviously has corrupted after long usage among its various inhabitant. But a definite historical account on the matter has so far eluded research.
There is, however, a wealth of folklores on the subject in the oral history of the province. At least three versions on the naming of Surigao have become rooted in the tradition of the people.
One popular legend says that Surigao is named after Rajah Solibao. As the story goes, Solibao, a Mamanwa chieftain, sought sanctuary, like Magellan, in the sheltered waters of the place when he was caught in the open sea by a storm while fishing. Solibao and his companions landed near the mouth of a river where the city is located today. They decided to settle in the land when they found out that it was fertile and there was gold in the riverbanks washed down from the nearby hills. When the Spaniards came, it was already a thriving barangay and they were told that Solibao was its king. But now knowing the native tongue they mistook this as the name of the village and called it Surigao.
A folklore handed down from the early Boholano immigrant who opened many of the coastal and inland settlements in the province holds that Surigao is actually derived from two words: Sur (South) and Agao (a common sobriquet in Visayan). It is said that in those days, itinerant merchants coming from the south would regale curious listeners with tales of their adventurers in a place which they simply described as “Sa Sur, Agao.” As the springboard for going deeper into the south or in the return journey before crossing the strait between Mindanao and the Visayas, the province became known as Surigao, although geographically it lies in the northern part of Mindanao.
As third version has a more colorful and credible claim. It contends that the province is named after Rajah Siagu as is the island of Siargao. The Rajah is one of two kings who met Magellan upon his arrival. He is recorded vividly in the chronicle of Pigafetta as the ruler of three islands and live in Calagan.
When Magellan paused at Surigao before proceeding to the Visayas he may have gone there not only to avoid the path of an oncoming typhoon but to return the goodwill of the Rajah. Dinagat, Bucas Granded and Siargao was not identified by Pigafetta, but they are the most prominent island triangle the vicinity of Calagan where Magellan sailed into the country. They are undoubtedly the three islands of Siagu. According to lgend, Dinagat is named after Queen Dina, the mother of Siagu, who ruled a kingdom near the sea (dagat). This particular folklore acceptable and sound moorings. Siagu is unquestionably a historical figure. He was a leader of the province and, then as now, places are named after men like him. Surigao after all mean: the land of Siagu.
GATEWAY OF DISCOVERY
The off-shore waters in the northeast through which sailing ships must approach the coast from the open sea is a dangerous route. It is the dreaded path of some of the most powerful typhoons in the country and a swirling low-pressure area. And yet, few bodies of water anywhere in the world are famous as this sea corridor. It is through this gateway that the intrepid Europeans captains blazed the trail of discovery and conquest in the Philippines in the early 16th century. It is also here that the deepest spot on earth, the Philippine Deep, is located. And farther north, knifing inward west between Surigao and Leyte, is the Strait of Surigao, scene of one of the greatest naval battles in history. Through this sometimes turbulent passage, the flagship of Magellan first entered the Philippine archipelago on March 1521 after an epic journey across the Pacific Ocean.
Through accurate seamanship or sheer accident, voyages after Magellan’s treaded on the waters of the province, inevitably making anchorage here or landing on its shores. Hofre Garcia de Loaysa, bound for the Spice Island, anchored at the Bay of Lianga on October 9, 1526. One of his galleons was wrecked by a storm and sank in a shallow reef off Cape San Agustin, but he managed to reach his destination.
Another expedition was launched by a worried king of Spain under the command of Alvaro de Saavedra. It left its home port in Mexico in 1527 to look for the lost Loaysa. On February 4, 1528, the fleet arrived at Nonoc Island. Saavedra buried one of his sailors who died on board the ship there and refurbished his food supply. He stayed in the island for 19 days and explored the neighboring islands and the mainland of Surigao. Loaysa sailed for Bucas Grande where he made another brief stop-over. Then, he headed south and reached Baganga, where he picked Sebastian Oporto, a crewman dumped two years earlier by Loaysa, before proceeding to Tidore.
The first expeditionary force sent to conquer the Philippines left to port of Natividad, Mexico, with a fleet of six warships on November 1, 1542. One year later, after a rough voyage, Ruy Lopez Villalobos arrived in the province which he promptly claimed as crown possession. He steered towards Cebu, dogging the coastline expecting to cross the strait of Surigao. But strong northeasterly winds, however, drove him south to the Moluccas.
Miguel de Legaspi and Andres Urdaneta, who accompanied the unsuccessful expedition of Villalobos, finally made a solid beachhead for the “sword and the cross” in the Philippines on their arrival in 1565. The Spanish flotilla cruised through Surigao Strait and the Gulf of Leyte, skirting the province which was within sighting distance, on its way to Limasawa and Bohol. Upon reaching there, however, Legaspi immediately sent emissaries to Surigao and Butuan. Fathers Martin de Rada and Juan del la Isla subsequently concluded a treaty of peace with Linampas, the provincial overlord or regulo, thus paving the way for the colonization and Christianization of the hostile south.
Captain Edward Swan, and English buccaneer out on a hunt in the seven seas for Spanish and Portuguese prize ships, visited one of the Islands of the province in 1624. William Dampier, one of the crew-members, recorded the Place as the Island of Saint John. He described it as an isle “with a vast swampland.” This does not appear now in the maps and is shrouded with mystery. Saint John is known among cartographers as a ‘lost island’ and speculations linger to this day that it may have disappeared beneath the waves of the ocean like the continent of Atlantis. Geographers however say that this is actually the island of Siargao.
It is Francisco de Castro, a Portuguese explorer, who claims the honor, however, of having set foot in the province first and spread the virus of western influence. He drifted by accident to Surigao from the Moluccas in 1543, barely two decades after Magellan. De Castro succeeded in converting the king of Surigao and Butuan and baptized him as Antonio Galvan after the Governor of Ternate. Valeio Ledesma and Manuel Martinez, two friars on the trip, preached the gospel and baptized many people. But they eventually withdrew from Surigao when the new converts returned to their old pagan ways and became increasingly strident in their treatment of the Portuguese missionaries.
The First Glow of Faith
Agustin de la Cavada, noted Spanish historian and founder of the first newspaper in the Philippines, contended that Surigao is the first province in the Philippines to receive the glow of faith. This conclusion, perhaps, stems from the fact that De la Cavada believes that it was at Masao that Father Valderama celebrated the controversial first recorded mass in the country and performed his first baptism. Saint Francis Xavier is reputed to have evangelized in the 15th century in the heart of Moslem Mindanao, but there is no surviving record of his presence and movement there.
On the other hand, the missionaries who came with De Castro, Villalobos and Legaspi, although not really successful in their initial attempts, made significant in roads in establishing a christian foothold in the Philippines. The original batch of regular Jesuit resident friars arrived in 1596 with Buenavista as their base station. Later arrivals spread throughout the province, with Fathers Francisco Vicente, Juan Lopez and Bartolome Sanchez de Xara, a secular priest, manning the lonely outposts at Siargao and Tandag.
The Recollects tried in1597 to establish missions in Surigao, but this failed because of the hostility and resistance of the natives. Finally, the Spanish government sent an armed expedition in 1609 to subjugate the province and impose the authority of the crown. The Surigaonons, known then as Caragans, were defeated by the invading force under the command of Juan de Vega. Some 1,500 christian prisoners were liberated and in order to protect the territory from reprisal raids by the natives, the royal Fort of Tandag was constructed to garrison it.
Missionary work began to progress afterwards with the following towns as the first centers of faith: Tandag, 1662; Siargao, 1635; Bislig, 1642; Surigao, 1752; with Butuan, Linao and Talacogon in western front and hinterland. Tandag was, then, the capital of the province which was designated as the East District (Caraga) of Mindanao.
Surigao City today was an station only of the parish of Siargao and Nonoc. When the Moro raiders destroyed Caolo (caob) in 1750, Fr. Lucas de la Cruz, its prior evacuated to Surigao which he officially declared as the parish residence on February 1, 1752 when he order all the canonical books to be transferred from Siargao to Surigao.
The Fall of Tandag
The Spanish stronghold in Tandag in due time effectively blocked and neutralized the Moslem raids of the coastal towns in Visayas and Luzon including Surigao. Combined with the forest in Zamboanga and Ozamiz, this stone rampart became a strategic sentinel in the Spanish move to interdict the swift Moslem striking ships which plundered the christian settlements. Thus, in mid-July 1754, the Magindanaos led by Datu Dumango attacked it.
No help from the outside came and Tandag was doomed. The attackers ringed the fort until its defenders and the people who sought refuge in it were reduced to starvation. The siege lasted for four months but it finally fell on December 1. The entire garrison, together with its commanded, perished in the ensuing massacre. Few civilians, including a Recollect priest, were taken captive.
Father Miguel Bernad would later on write that “few events in Philippine history can equal the terrible “climax in the siege of Tandag.” Father Jose Ducos, the Captain General of the naval squadron in Iligan and Pangil Bays, would come to the rescue of Tandag too late. An air of desolation still hang about the lonely outpost when he arrived. He started to rebuild its defenses and later on repulsed subsequent Moslem attacks.
Days of Turmoil
Surigao’s history is rich in drama and is often characterized by turmoil. A few events in its past after the tragedy of Tandag, has made the province a setting of violent struggles for power, of rising nationalism and the liberation of the Philippines by the American forces.
During the Philippine revolution, Don Simon Gonzalez, the military governor of Mindanao appointed by General Emilio Aguinaldo imprisoned by friars in the province. He confiscated all their properties in the name of the revolutionary government. He sent Fr. Francisco de Paula Sanchez, a former professor of Jose Rizal who was previously a parish priest of Tagana-an and then of Tandag, into plight like a common criminal. It was a black moment for the church who has, for almost three centuries, lorded it over the fate of the province.
In 1898, however, Don Simon, his brother Wenceslao, who was designated as civil governor of Surigao, and his father Don Jantoy, a former governor, were arrested on orders of General Prudencio Garcia who came from Baganga with his own force of insurgents. The Gonzalezes, all top officials of the revolutionary government of the province, were killed somewhere in the town of Cortez while under the custody of the soldiers of Garcia. This bloody incident is a dark page in the history of Surigao. While no one have ever given an accurate account about the killing, whether it was an execution carried out on orders of superior authorities or murder, it undoubtedly was an off-shoot of the rivalry for power typical among the leadership of the revolution: a vicious, deadly struggle that in the end stigmatized its idealistic cause.
Much later, on January 8, 1924, violence would against erupt in the province. On that day, the quiet hamlets in Pamosaingan and Socorro would witness an encounter between the “Colorums” and a detachment of constabulary soldiers led by the Provincial Commander, Captain Valentin Juan. The constable were out-numbered and over powered. Captain Juan was among 18 killed in the skirmish where only two survivors managed to escape and break the news.
This soon electrified the whole country and the province was gripped with hysteria. The ‘Colorum Uprising’, as it was called would be headlined in all the major newspapers. Even the New York Times printed a story about the episode saying that Colorum assassins had gone on a rampage of killings and murders. The whole incident which should be seen from the complex perspective of emerging social and nationalistic aspirations was blown grotesquely out of proportion. Thus, the government’s response was a merciless bombardment of the Colorums sanctuary at Socorro; a scorch-the-earth policy that brought the relief from the frightened many, but vehement denunciation from the thinking few.
Lantayug and other leaders of the island uprising were captured. And on April 3, 1924 they were tried before the court. Seven days later, they were sentenced by Judge Ricardo Jalbuena to life imprisonment at the Bilibid Penitentiary. It was a speedy and at the same time mock trial.
David Sturvent, 52 years later, would write about the Colorum episode:
“An objective appraisal of the flare-up was hard to come by. If the uprising had provoked Americans and Filipinos to hard thoughts concerning the growing disequilibrium within the Philippines society, something of value might have emerged. It did not. No one, apparently asked why the uprising had occurred. The entire episode, in short, became another exercise in futility.”
But times would change. During World War II, the province became the scene of the decisive turning of the hinge of fate in the war in the Pacific. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had just liberated Leyte, after the first advance troops of the Americans made their first landing on October 17 at Campintac beach in Loreto and hoisted the ‘Star and Stripes’ there. But the Japanese had a last desperate blow from the sea aimed at foiling the U.S. invasion.
The Japanese Imperial navy dispatched a mighty fleet to converge at the waters of Surigao and Leyte to destroy the American fleet guarding MacArthur’s troops. The naval battle that ensued would be known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but the battle of Surigao Strait, which was part of the over-all naval engagement which happened simultaneously in the vicinity, would become the turning point, the decisive engagement. The Japanese fleet steaming west into Surigao Strait towards the American beach leads was destroyed by Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorfs’ Seventh Fleet in a night and day torpedo and surface bombardment action. Admiral Shoji Nishimura went down to the bottom of the strait aboard his flagship, the Yamashiro, and with him went the last hope of victory of the ‘Rising Sun’.
Writing about the Battle of Surigao Strait later, C. Vann Woodwoard would observe:
“it was not for the Japanese and American admirals converging upon the strait to introduce it into the pages of history. There are no more historical names in the area than Surigao, for it is through this narrow gateway that the Portuguese discoverer Ferdinand Magellan first sailed into the archipelago, and it was a few miles west of the strait that he met his death. Between 1521 and 1944 history had pretty much neglected Surigao.”
Perhaps, not anymore.
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NOTE: The two articles “History of Surigao” and “Gateway of Discovery” are culled from a book published by the Surigao Provincial Historical Commission.
THE COLORUM UPRISING
Surigao became a troubled spot in 1924 when a picket uprising erupted on Bucas Grande island. The disturbance, known as the “Colorum Uprising” was short-lived but bloody. Before it was brutally suppressed by the military, it focused national attention on the province as the flashpoint of what many nervous colonial and Filipino leaders feared would escalate into a popular rebellion. In the United States, the New York Times carried a front page stories of the gruesome massacre committed by rampaging fanatics on Bucas Grande Island. When the bloodshed was finally over, Surigao emerged from its nightmare as witness to a shameful travesty of human justice and the folly of punitive justice which as one American writer puts it, was accepted retribution during those times.
The beginnings of this grassroots violence were complex and dated way back. But the conflict flared up into open hostilities between the government and the so-called zealots when a contingent of Constabulary troopers attacked the sleepy fishing village of Pamosaingan on January 8, 1924. The “expeditionary force” was unexpectedly routed by a raging assembly of furious villages. Its brash commander and 17 of his riflemen, including the Chief of Police of Numancia were boloed to death during the close hand to hand the combat. Only three soldiers and the motor launch helmsman survived on the government side. Eighty local fighters, mostly fishermen and farmers were gunned down by the Constables who opened fire first and provoked village retaliation. Yet, the encounter was somehow depicted by the national newspapers and reported to Manila by provincial leaders as slaughter of defenseless lawmen ambushed by “hordes of Colorums on the warpath.” In a vengeful mood, the Manila Government unleashed a full-scale retaliatory operation against Bucas Grande.
On the afternoon of the Constabulary assault of Pamosaingan, however, the village menfolk who had been forewarned of the troopers’ arrival from Numancia had gathered with apprehension in a house near the rocky beach. They carried bolos which serve as working tool and weapon in the rural villages. But they were not preparing an ambush. They merely discussed how to cope with what they anticipated would be a repetition of Constabulary abuses and how to defend themselves against this threat. “Defensive action, not ambuscade was what were planning,” recalled Magno Juanita, 79, a survivor of the encounter.
Two months earlier, Captain Valentin Juan and his men visited Bucas Grande in a display of naked power. He destroyed the village “tangke” where peasants bathe to heal themselves of many ailments. This bathing tank was built at the behest of Felix Bernales, alias Lantayug, an itinerant faith healer, in place of a natural seaside spring at Puyangi where he used to administered water therapy to the sick, many of whom were children suffering from nosebleeds during an epidemic in the summer months. After many patients were apparently cured, the people came to regard the tangke as miraculous, one possessed with curative power.
The troopers also maltreated some of the elders of the village, kicking them with their boots, especially, those whom they suspected to be members of the secret Colorum society. The same inhuman treatment was inflicted among the folks in the other hamlets. In Pamosaingan, the constabularymen stopped a Sunday gathering of the faithfuls. They ordered all the people inside the church who were praying to go outside and then divested them of all their scapulars and religious images. These were then piled on the ground and burned before the outraged but helpless villagers.
Captain Juan regarded the villagers with deep suspicion. He was later convinced that there was a seditious plot being hatched in Bucas Grande against the government. Through the grapevine, he had learned that the Colorums planned to overthrow the government. As early as July and August of 1923, he had sent telegrams to Manila, copies of which were later given to Governor-General Leonard wood after the Captain’s death, saying that migration of land seekers from Samar and Leyte was heavy. He did not indicate the possibility of an armed outbreak, but the captain asked for the prosecution of the Colorums who said were deceiving and swindling the ignorant people, professing all kinds of supernatural powers, including that of healing the sick. He assigned agents to spy on the Colorums. This move turned out to be a fatal blunder. The Captain had failed to perceive village reaction against his high-handed actions, particularly the smashing of the water tank. Enraged by the troopers’ cruelty, some hotheads agitated for violence. Gregorio Timcang and Albino Lagapa became the most ardent exponent of village vengeance. Both who cried for blood and with indignant exhortation and threat urged the islanders to rise in arms against the authorities. Thus, a series of vendetta killings ensued, Pacifico Cariaga, a policeman from Numancia was knifed by Jose Juanite and Placido Rapol at Pamosaingan. Three other plainclothesmen were also killed at Socorro by a group led by Martin Telin and Marcelino Juanite during a drinking spree. Finally, two policemen from Dapa were also slain. News of the killings spread fast. By New Year of 1924, the whole province was in near panic. Chilling stories coming from the island portrayed the Colorums as madmen “dissecting the government agents and triumphantly dining on their victims’ raw heart.”
Captain Juan thus prepared to return to the island, an avenging warrior, determined to go to battle. He wired the Adjutant of the Constabulary in Manila on January 7 with the following messages:
“Report received today that five Constabulary detached in Socorro and Pamosaingan, Bucas Grande Island, and one policeman killed by Colorum fanatics coming from Leyte. Governor (Pedro) Coleto and myself now leaving for scene with Lieutenant Guillermo and all available soldiers numbering sixteen. Condition reported serious. Request reinforcement.”
Governor Coleto also dispatched a telegram to the Chief of the Executive Bureau in Manila informing him of the killings and the presence of “more than 1,000 Colorums in Bucas and Siargao Islands.” The Governor likewise asked for reinforcement.
Captain Juan sailed for his destination from the wharf of Surigao after a show of military might to calm down the jittery populace of the capital town. Ironically, he was on board the motor launch “Captain Clark” so named after an American provincial commander who was killed by local rebels during the uprising of 1903. The contingent passed the night at Gigaquit and from there proceeded to Numancia to pick up its Chief of Police who had jurisdiction over the barrio of Pamosaingan at the time. They arrived at the island in the afternoon.
“Pamosaingan resembled a typhoon’s eye”, David R. Sturtevant described the village before the battle.
A news dispatched to the newspaper El Debate on January 9 recounted the fight detail:
“At six yesterday afternoon, the Constabulary launch arrived in Pamosaingan, Island of Bucas, where 600 Colorums, well-armed with bolos were hiding in ambush. The expeditionary force led by the ill-starred Captain Valentin B. Juan and Lt. Juan Guillermo did not know the exact number of the fanatics.
“They observed at anchorage. Not one Colorum moved on the island. The Constabulary sent three volleys directed at the position where, according to their information, the Colorums were hiding. But nobody appeared. Soon, a Colorum appeared from a coconut grove. The Commander fired at the lone Colorum.
“Once on land, the soldiers advanced from different directions toward the house where the Colorums were supposed to have gathered. Three times, in three forward movements, they threatened the fanatics with shouts and gunshots. At the third, a Colorum sprang up, challenging and shouting in a jocular way, “Your gun are good for nothing, you are our victims. Come out my comrades!” The constabulary immediately fired, the Colorum falling mortally wounded. Five Colorums made their appearance, but they too, fell dead.
“Thereupon about 200 fanatics infuriated when they saw a number of their comrades had been killed, advanced with lightning-like rapidity upon the Constabulary, whom they attacked with bolos, regardless of the shots from their guns.
”The commander ordered “rally” but the superior number of the Colorums made the Constabulary easy victims of their ferocity and fanaticism. The commander was the first to fall exclaiming “Naku!”
The headline story of the Manila Times splashed the encounter as a massacre of Constabulary soldiers including a Captain and Lieutenant and one municipal policeman who were killed by hordes of Colorums, religious fanatics in Pamosaingan, Bucas Island, according to a telegraphic advice by the Governor-General’s Office.
“More that 1,000 Colorums are reported on the warpath.
“Reports current in official circles are to the effect that the affair is a religious uprising.”
The New York Times, America’s foremost newspaper, carried the story in its January 10, 1924 issue. Dispatched from Manila, the news was headlined: “Mindanao Fanatics Killed Troopers.” It reported that “only four constables escaped” from the scene of the clash and that a religious sect known as the Colorum had broken out after nearly twenty years of peace. It added that reinforcement was being rushed to the province and the Governor-General Wood will investigate the incident.
Coleto’s terse message to Manila:
“Rush reinforcement. Yesterday afternoon Captain Juan and Lieutenant Guillermo and eleven soldiers killed in Pamosaingan, Bucas Island by Colorum fanatics. Sergeant Gardo and three soldiers escaped. Just arrived this morning giving report, Station Surigao only eight soldiers.”
Inocencio Cortes, a former Governor and Assemblyman of the province, later telegrammed Representative Clementino Diez informing him the “more than 1,700 Colorums are reported under arms in the province and Bucas Island and force is needed to conquer them.” The wire also stated that in Pamosaingan and Socorro alone, more than 1,000 Colorums were under arms. In Cabuntog, sixty fanatics were reported under the leadership of Felix Lantayug, Alejandro Lasala (he was referring to Geraldo) and Juan Bahao. Sixty more were said to be in the sitios of Puyo, Gigaquit and Bacuag under Evaristo Estrella and Ireneo Espejon. Six hundred were under the banner of Juan Ramoso with those in Timamana under Julian Basmayor and Benito Maisog, according to Cortes.
These officials reports and numerous grossly exaggerated stories from other sources, given ample play up in the press, combined to give the national government the impression that a formidable force of fanatical fighters in the province had risen in arms. A widespread rebellion loomed in the eyes of Manila officials. Actually, only a few men were arousing the masses by force, threat and tomfoolery to rally behind their rebellious cause. Gregorio Timcang, hate-filled and emboldened by the victory at Pamosaingan rushed to the Mainit-Tubod-Timamana enclaves of the Colorums. These places were not really fanatical strongholds but areas where a number of tangke had been constructed by old man Lantayug for adherents to his brand of folk medicine. These were the simple, gullible peasants, like those on Bucas Island, who had found common hope in a man who cured them of their diseases by simply bathing them.
Fanatic fringes on the countrysides like Lantayug were not uncommon during those days. Nor was it strange for rural folks living in isolated farmlands and generally ignorant, to believe them. These were the innocent people whom Timcang and his cohorts rallied and threatened with death to march in columns of Placer and Surigao to seize the poorly-defended capital. Governor Coleto, for once, correctly sensed that the Colorums would attempt an attack in that direction.
Meantime, a striking force was rushed to the province. The gunboat U.S. Sacramento sailed from the navy yard at Cavite with 100 Constabularymen under the command of an American Col. Clarence Bowers. The coastguard cutter Polilo from Tacloban was ordered to join the gunboat. The Sacramento sailed for Bucas Grande with Bowers under order by General Rafael Crame, Constabulary Chief, to immediately attack the island and the ship commander, Frank Jack Fletcher, with instructions from the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Asiatic Fleet, ostensibly “to investigate a serious uprising of Colorums and confidentially report to him.” The yacht Apo, meanwhile, was directed to proceed to Iligan to ferry the 15th Constabulary Company. Elements of the Sulu expeditionary force also left Sulu for Camp Overton in Zamboanga at 4:30 in the afternoon of February 8 with Surigao as their destination. The highest ranking officers of the force were both Americans: Col. Waloe and major Stevens,
Bowers’ troops first landed at Pamosaingan but the whole village was deserted. Nevertheless, the constabulary men were “jumpy and didn’t like the idea of encountering the bolo men.” They found several decomposed bodies of the constables killed in the January 8 skirmish and buried them. Bowers then went to Dapa where he issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the Colorums for them to surrender. But this was ignored.
On January 23, the U.S.S. Sacramento bombarded Socorro and Bowers burned the village.
Once more, the Manila Times ran a sensational headline story on January 24 describing the attack:
“A barrage laid down by the U.S.S. gunboat Sacramento covered the landing of Col. Bowers with 100 Constabulary officers and men at Socorro, Bucas Island, where they charged against entrenched forces of Colorums ready to defend the town Wednesday morning at 8:00 o’clock.
“Casualties in Colorum ranks are unknown although two dead and two seriously wounded were found in a burned house. One Constabulary soldier was killed by a bullet.
“Believing the holding of the town inadvisable, Col. Bowers burned it and returned his forces to the Sacramento. Col. Bowers did not see fit to hold the town because of the difficulty of defense and the likelihood of this forces becoming weather-bound and unable to re-embark.”
“Col. Bowers intends to establish temporary stations at Consolacion to cut off the fanatics from Siargao. The base will remain at Dapa. From Dapa a detachment will cover northern Siargao, where several bands of Colorums are reported troublesome.
“Upon arriving the third company will establish a station at Pamosaingan, west of Bucas Grande, to prevent fanatics from crossing to the mainland.”
Commander Fletcher got underway at 4:25 A.M., 23 January 1924, and proceeded to Socorro arriving off the town shortly after 6:00 A.M. towing two motor sailing launches. The remainder of the ship’s boats were lowered and the entire landing force consisting of the 97 Constabulary and a Marine machine gun detachment, one officer and 22 mean, were embarked in thirteen and one half minutes.
“It was fully realized that Commander-in-Chief did not desire to send troops ashore unless absolutely necessary, the situation was considered such that it could hardly be avoided. The number of fanatics were variously estimated from 600 to 800 men with bolos and with about 12 rifles and five revolvers captured from Constabulary previously killed. These men were reported to have prepared ambushes and pitfalls and desperately determined to defend Socorro, the sacred headquarters of the Colorum, In view of the fact that the machine gun was by far the most effective weapon under such condition and that the Constabulary has none and no men trained in their use, it was decided that the Commander-in-Chief, were he present, would be in favor of landing a few of these important weapon with necessary men. In my opinion, the Marines saved many lives by the terror inspired in the Colorum by their machine guns and the moral effect on the constabulary.
“After embarkation of the leading force, the Sacramento bombarded the town of Socorro and environs with 4” better firing 148 rounds. Owing to the nature of the terrain not much could be told of the effect, but five or four houses were seen to collapse and one was set on fire.
“At 7:28 A.M., the Sacramento ceased fire and the landing force which had been lying off, stood on the beach firing one pounder and machine guns and landed between two reefs on a sandy beach without opposition. They then advanced into the town, passing some trenches abandoned by the Colorums. About 300 yards from the beach, fire was opened by a few rifles from an unknown number of men concealed in a natural trench or depression. At the same time loud yelling was heard and one constabulary private dropped dead shot through the heart. A number of Colorum estimated from eight to fifteen were seen to run off to the left towards the beach. They were promptly brought under heavy machine gun fire of the marines on the left flank and probably severely punished. Lt. Inman, USMC, in command of the Maine gun platoon sent word to Col. Bowers that the Colorums were running towards the beach on the left flank whereupon Col. Bowers ordered the force to retire. The Constabulary did not bring in the body of the dead private although repeatedly ordered to do so by Col. Bowers.
“As the Sacramento could no longer fire owing to the disappearance of the landing force into the coconut grove, I anchored the ship and went ashore arriving just as the force had retired to the beach. Lt. Inman, upon finding that the squad ordered by Col. Bowers to bring in the dead private had dropped him, advanced with Private H. Rohrbough and Private C.J. Rickman 200 yards ahead of our line and brought him back. At this time the morale of the Constabulary seemed to be very low, the men crouching behind trees and apparently very nervous including some of the officers. The Marines were splendid, apparently hugely enjoying the situation. Lt. Inman, and Corporal R.C. Holt, Private C.C. Mudget, Private T. Piper, Private T. Martin, Private H. Rohrbough and Private C.J. Hickman advanced about 200 yards to set fire to houses until ordered to return.
I requested Col. Bowers to move by the right flank until 50 yards clear of the line of fire. The direction of the entrenched Colorums was indicated by flags stuck in the beach. I returned to the ship and manned one gun. After a ranging shot, I fired toward the trench hitting the beach and increasing the range in fifty yards increments until six hundred yards and had been covered. Great damaged was done to houses and coconut trees. About 24 rounds were fired this bringing the total of 4” rounds expended, including 20 fired by Lt. Commander Harlow, in my absence, to 216. After lunch, a detachment of Constabulary was sent to the north of the town to a hill to find if the trench could be seen, and eventually returned, having gone some distance and discovered that coconut palms and other trees prevented a clear view of the town. Then half of the force of the Constabulary advanced slowly into the northern part of the town and saw only three natives who promptly fled. The same detachment continued south through the town where the Colorums had been entrenched and found that the fanatics had fled. One very old man was discovered unhurt and in one house were two dead and two badly wounded; all these had been struck by machine gun or rifle bullet and one of them had been wounded by a 4” shell.
“It was agreed by Col. Bowers and myself that the town would be difficult to occupy safely owing to the terrain; that a force established there would be weather bound for days; that the moral effect of the action and burning of the headquarters, which they had evidently expected to defend, would be disastrous to the morale of the Colorums and the town of Consolation would be easy to defend, had a good harbor and, if occupied, could be used as a based to blockade Socorro.
“Accordingly, the town was burnt and the landing forces embarked at 4:45 P.M. The Constabulary were sent to the LUZ which had arrived during the day and the Marines returned to the Sacramento.”
An Associated Press story carried by the New York Times on January 29 reported that one Constabulary soldier and two fanatics were killed during the battle. It also reported the burning of the town where the fanatics had been entrenched. The dispatch added:
“Governor General Wood’s yacht, the Apo, which was dispatched to the scene when reinforcement was asked has reached Surigao with a detachment of Constabulary troops and will return to Iligan for additional forces.”
Associated Press injected a curious twist in its story when it reported that “Representative Tomas Confessor has announced his intention of introducing in the Philippine legislature a resolution to ascertain whether Governor General Wood used the yacht Apo for an official tour of inspection or for a fishing trip.”
The New York Times itself on February 2, in a wireless story from Manila, reported that 800 Colorums were slain at Socorro. Quoting stories from the Captain and officers of an interisland vessel which came from Surigao, the Times that casualties of the fanatics “exceeded 800.”
Panic gripped the province, the story said, and many people were fleeing northward some as far as Manila. Among the prominent officials going to Manila were a Justice of the Peace, Dr. Litonjua and Dr. Corpus, provincial health officer, who had asked the local Constabulary months earlier for the demolition of the Socorro water tank.
From the island, Bowers went to the mainland and landed his troops in Placer. He was just on time to intercept a bolo battalion of Colorums who were marching slowly towards Surigao. Timcang who had established contact with Basmayor and Maisog in Mainit and Timamana has somehow managed to convince the Colorums there that the Constabulary had been wiped out in Pamosaingan; the capital town was thus defenseless.
The rebels held a rally at the townhall of Tubod urged the people to join them. Those who refused were branded as “Hudas” (Judas) or traitors. In order to drive terror among the uncommitted villagers and show that they intend to carry out their threat, they beheaded Juan Anob at a culvert in Timamana. As reported by the New York Times and confirmed by several survivors, the rebellious elements were recruiting by force, terrorism and falsehood, spreading the “legend that Rizal had come to life to assume the supreme dictatorship of the Philippines.” On the top of this, as in the islands, they assured the people that they would become invincible from the bullets of the Constabulary with the use of knee-cap amulets or in case they were killed they would rise from sleep after three days. Thus, those who were actually at the head column of the Colorum army which Col. Bowers met at Timamana were human shields of captives forcibly recruited to fight a lost and violent cause.
The Manila newspapers once again bannered telegraphic accounts of the bloodletting in the mainland:
“Fifty four bodies of Colorums killed at a recent battle with the Constabulary at bad-as were not buried, but were left exposed in view to show other natives the error of their belief that they would be resuscitated three days after death, the Captain of the steamer Sontus told press representatives.”
The Manila Times headline story was another screamer:
“One Hundred Bolomen Hurl Themselves on Constabulary”
“Pitched Battle, on Surigao Mainland, Second in 55 Hours.”
“Shifting suddenly from Bucas Island to the mainland of Surigao, the Colorum revolt broke out with renewed fierceness Friday when more than 100 bolomen flung themselves on a Constabulary detachment commanded by Col. Bowers and were repulsed only after 51 of their number had been killed, 19 wounded and 13 captured. This was the second fought at Bucas Island when Col. Bowers routed the entrenched colorums last Wednesday.
“The inslaught which occurred at two o’clock in the afternoon in Sitio Buyungan, Barrio Timamana, Surigao was the most formidable yet encountered by the Constabulary.
“While the battle raged, more than 200 other Colorums lurked in the vicinity and only refrained from charging because of the reserves which the First Division of the attack sustained.
“A special telegram to the director of Port yesterday confirmed the early report of the battle and said all telephone lines between Timamana and the town of Surigao had been destroyed by the fanatics in a desperate effort to isolate the Constabulary forces.
“The Colorums are successfully recruiting many adherences. In some quarters they are considered to be in reality Pulajanes.”
Actually, 64 peasants were massacred during the encounter and their bodies were left to rot for three days before they were buried in a common grave not far from the spot where they were moved down. Alejo Basmayor, one of the leaders of the rebels was the last to die among the casualties. He was shot between the eyes. Timcang, however, escaped to Agusan.
The New York Times which had given extensive coverage to the disturbance from the very beginning of the hostilities to end, had this wireless report:
Fifty-four Colorums were killed, nineteen wounded and thirteen captured in battle near Placer, Surigao, with Philippine Constabulary under the command of Col. Bowers.”
The same story reported that Senator Jose Clarin of the 11th District had attacked Governor-General Wood in a one-hour speech in the Legislature. Clarin denounced the burning of Socorro as “unnecessary, unjustified and unlawful.” President of Dapa, Nicanor Sering, had pleaded to the punitive force not to pulverize and burn Socorro, but this was brushed aside by both Bowers and Commander Fletcher. General Crame’s order to Bowers was to spare lives and destruction of properties whenever possible. And Fletcher was merely to investigate the incident and not send American troops unless necessary. But he went charging into the melee instead with machine gunners.
From the mainland, Bowers swung back to the island. Another fighting had erupted at Cabuntog. A Constabulary unit advanced against a band of 70 Colorums and sympathizers. The Constabularymen were attacked and in the ensuing skirmish two constables were wounded and five zealots were killed. But the next day, the Colorums surrendered to Major Valeriano of the 15th Philippines Constabulary Company based in Dapa.
With reinforcement from the Coast Guard cutter Polillo, Bowers this time landed in Pamosaingan. He had two hundred and fifty Constabularymen, many of whom where veterans of the Moro campaign under the Sulu-Mindanao Command. His armament included a tree-inch mountain gun brought by the Sulu-Mindanao Expeditionary force form Camp Keithley, Lanao and a trench mortar. Bowers did not encounter any opposition. Assisted by forty cargadores, the entire force, preceded by a reconnaissance party, trudged inland and reached Socorro without the enemy in sight. It turned out that the remaining village population in Socorro and Pamosaingan had sought refuge on rocky Lobo mountain, the plateau of which served as a natural fortress.
After pounding the mountain redoubt with a barrage of artillery. The Constabulary advanced against the Colorum position. A soldier’s diary had this telegraphic account of the final assault against the trapped villagers:
“Prepared at 4:00 P.M. for the field. Started at 7:00 A.M. for Cabangkalan. Sulu detachment acted as advance guard. Bombarded a hill at 9:00 A.M. with mountain gun. Col. Bowers took charged of operations. Major Steven’s advance guards followed by Delgado and Sandiko’s Jolo dets (detachments), Major Valeriano from right flank. Major Velasquez left. Major Babiera rear guard.”
The starving and shivering band of fugitives finally surrendered to the Constabulary. They began coming in. It was most impressive. They all came in little groups carrying while flags and holding up their hands. Little children as well as men.” It was exactly 8:00 A.M. of February 14, Valentine’s Day.
The following day, the last headline story on the island’s agony reported “Bucas Fanatics in Surrender.” With a triumphant note, the news disclosed that the two hundred and eighty-five Colorums surrendered to Col. Bowers.
The supposed leaders of the Colorums, Felix Vernales, Gerardo Lasala, Maximo Questerio, Juan Bahao and others were not yet captured. But at this point, Col. Bowers told Governor-General Wood that the operations against the Colorums were practically over.
Later events, as far as unrest was concerned, were anti-climatic. Lasala and others eventually surrendered. Timcang was captured in Agusan. True to the end in his role as agitator, terrorist and rebel, he was arousing the Manobos of the Agusan Valley to fight against the government. But “Lantayug”, the arch villain of the whole nightmarish episode was nowhere in Bucas Grande or the Province. He was arrested somewhere in Samar.
Summing up the entire incident, the conclusion is inescapable that the Bucas Grande affair was grist of sensational reporting. A New York Times story pointed out correctly that the fighting in the Philippines was exaggerated. Headline after headline in the country’s press could not dispel the fact that in the end more innocent lives were list in the one sided struggle between the heavily-armed military forces and the bolo-wielding peasants than the situation warranted or gave a shred of proof about the existence of an invisible revolutionary government in the forlorn island. What really stood out was the mindless and pathetic posturing of a people hoodwinked by a few rascals. The old man wandering about among the ruins inflicted by the bombardment of naval guns, whom the U.S. Marines saw, was in fact a lunatic not a fanatic.
A Manila Bulletin editorial would not brook open defiance to the forces of the forces of the government. “Opposition to constituted authority will under no circumstances be tolerated,” the editorial concluded with iron-fisted certainty. Yet, grudgingly, it conceded that the villagers “are to be pitied.” Hardly anyone saw it from this point. Power from the barrel of a gun had too much allure. Give the peasant the boot, not understanding and compassion would be the order of the day.
True to form, along with “Lantayug, Juan Bahao and other ringleaders of the Colorums, 190 alleged were charged of murder, sedition and brigandage before the Court of First Instance late in March 1924. The trial began on April 3, 1924. In seven days it was over. Judge Ricardo Jabuena, in an unbelievable demonstration of speedy justice, pronounced “Lantayug” and his co-accused guilty of multiple murder sentenced them to life imprisonment at the Bilibid prison. One hundred ninety, one shipload of the convicted were hauled to the national penitentiary and Baguio to serve their term of ten years. Others were found guilty of sedition and slapped with lesser penalty. Jalbuena even saw in the court’s decision and element of mercy when he intoned: were it not for the fact that… all of them are uneducated and ignorant, each would have sentenced to capital punishment.” What a tragedy.
But how did it start?
During the 20’s waves of migrants from Bohol, Samar and Leyte began coming to the province through the off-shore islands of Dinagat and Siargao. This was a historic migratory route and the demographic movement was not a phenomenon of those years… only it had been going on for generations. As usual, these pilgrims to a new land brought with them their own customs, traditions and folk beliefs. But most of them were Catholics. The others held diverse beliefs, some were Aglipayans, others were roving lunatic fingers posing as faith healers. Demagogues, too, came and pounced on the country bumpkins.
By 1917, the first dark cloud loomed over the islands. The tireless Aglipayan missionary Sinforoso Montemar, followed later on the mainland by Fernando Buyser, a persuasive orator and Visayan writer, started preaching in Siargao and Dinagat and before long, succeeded in converting many to the fold of the Philippine Independent Church. This sudden challenge to the established Catholic Church caused tension among the island populace eventually leading to a polarization of religious allegiance: The Catholics being the majority and legitimate Chrisitians on one end and the Aglipayans who came to be regarded as Colorums or spurious Christians on the other.
The changing impressions of the Catholic parish priest of Numancia during that time dramatized the shifting fortunes of religious rivalry in the island. At first, he considered the Colorums to be decent, neat and deeply devoted to the Sacred Heart. But by 1920 to 1921, the Dutch friar started making adverse remarks against the Colorums in public. “If all Filipinos are like you, they will never be a good future of your native land, it will not progress but retrogress,” he told the Colorums one time. The Aglipayans were said to be using indirect means, through a Catholic and Filipino association to earn the sympathy of those who despise their sect. This organization was known as the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary or simply the “Cofradia.”
The “Cofradia” was organized in Socorro by Geraldo Lasala and some migrants from Leyte. The aim of the “Cofradia” was laudably to foster devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Lasala was then a “harmless old man.”
As recalled by the survivors of the Bucas Ordeal, the organization “gave no trouble to the government. Their respect for the Catholic priest was extraordinary. They were strictly Catholic and seemed to foster the Catholic religion, too, as much as they could, bringing children to the Catholic priest and directing all those who join them to do the same.”
As in any organization, rules were formulated such as the wearing of white clothes and the wearing of traditional religious images and scapulars. Gradually, the “Cofradia” acquired a personality of its own and the womenfolk, especially the aged, were to be found spending more time in prayers and to the affairs of the organization than in the mundane of daily living.
The priest from Dapa seldom came to the island so did the parish priest of Numancia. The Cofradia in effect afforded a continuity of Catholic presence in the island. Unwittingly, and with good intention, it carried on religious functions and activities which are now encouraged and accepted as community churchism. This was grossly misunderstood by some Catholic purist and fanatics who saw it as contrary to church teachings and a pre-emption or priestly functions.
Then, in 1922 and 1923, strange characters started arriving the island. One of them was Felix Bernales and then Juan Bahao. Unknown to the islanders, Bernales or “Lantayug” was a hatchetman of Laureano Solamo, a zealot who was headquartered in Cebu. “Lantayug” had several brushes with the law and had thus become adept in deception. At the time of his arrival, he was 63 years old. He was at one time, arrested for posing with his mistress, Eusebia Puyo as the “King and Queen of the Philippines.” In the island, he posed as the reincarnation of Rizal and this time his ploy was faith healing through water therapy. This worked magic among the native villagers. Soon he had constructed a bathing tank for her daily ritual of mass healing. Cofradia members and others made early morning processions with lamplights to the tangke. “Lantayug” soon emerged as a reversed figure to the dismay and consternation of Lasala and the other elders of Cofradia. Before the uprising flared up, “Lantayug”, using the same modus operandi, managed to construct bathing tanks at Mainit, Tubod and Jabonga, Agusan del Norte and captivated many fanatical adherents. He became powerful and no one among the villagers dared expose his activities.
Another poseur who took advantage of the islanders’ ignorance was Cinon Lagbas who came from Sugbong Cogon, Misamis Oriental. His end-of-the-world tale sent many gullible people into a frenzy of abaca planting in order to produce large quantities of rope which he said would be used to leash the world to prevent it from tumbling out of its axis. The ropes were actually sold in Cebu where they command a lucrative price.
Juan Bahao on the other hand, started out convincing the villagers to join the Philippine Independence Church (Aglipayan). But early in his mission, he was expected to exposed as a pervert pouncing on innocent women of Cofradia. He was later on discredited.
The Cofradia, this time, with mixed devotion to Jesus and “Lantayug”, went on with its religious activities. Its menfolk, however, threatened by a common fee, the harsh environment of an almost barren island, formed some sort of a kibbutz. They organized work brigades with particular assignments divided according to the basic needs of the village. Thus, there was a group specializing in fishing, lumbering, harvesting, forest clearing and other chores. The Socorro kibbutz was formed with tinabangay (cooperation) as the guiding ethic. The discipline among its ranks was not a product of fanaticism but one dictated by the formidable challenge of having to survive in a new land, a weather-beaten island.
It was natural for the simple folks to be superstitious on the island where after dark one hears frightening sounds and sees many strange sights. Without the benefit of education, they turned to charms to protect them. One favorite amulet was the pulverized knee-cap of the dead which was said to render its possessor invincible. Another was a scapular with some Arabic inscriptions and this was reputed to be a protection against the enchanted spirits in the forest. These amulets later on became the phony weapons of the desperate islanders during the uprising. After the handy bolo, what else could they marshal against the guns and artillery of the Constabulary and Marines?
In the confused and jumbled culture of the islanders, it was “Lantayug” who emerged as the most dominant figure. The outside world thus tended to view the situation of Bucas Grande as one fanatical movement, not knowing that they were desperate and had no more commonality of aspirations than what could be expected among the traders in a marketplace.
The deep suspicion engendered by the religious and the inability by health authorities to provide civilized competition to the “Power” of the tangke and the marked indifference of their task inadequate information to the villagers about the absurdity of “Lantayug’s” water therapy eventually led to the unfortunate smashing of the bathing tank at Socorro. It was a senseless act that was attended by Constabulary brutality. It was the sole act which galvanized the island into a united action.
Sturvelent, not with sympathy, but perception, wrote aptly:
“The real tragedy of Surigao was that its underlying importance went unnoticed. No one in the authority sought a fundamental explanation of the upheaval. Like its precursers, elsewhere in the Philippines, it was traced to ignorance and fanaticism. Like its forerunners, also, it was regarded as an isolated event. The fact that the flare up represented and ingrained peasant response to incomprehensible change was never apparent to Manila. With all its other wordy proclivities, the Colorums represented a rude form of Hamlet nationalism. Emphasis on Jose Rizal constituted the key to understanding the countryside’s evolving climate. Two decades of American role had altered peasant aspirations. In the emerging universe of village true believers, millennium and independence had come to mean one and the same thing.”
In this scene, the Bucas Grande uprising can be considered and extension of the struggle of Adriano Concepcion in 1903. These were not lost causes actually, for as Salud Algabre said: “No uprising fails… each one is a step on the right direction.”